ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2020
Tolerant and intolerant macaques show different levels of structural complexity in their vocal communication.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Relationship Value, Emotion, and Uncertainty Shape Conflict-Resolution Communication in a Wild Primate.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
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- Assessing flexibility in meaning and context in non-human communication.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Inertia and Rapid Divergence in the Evolution of Yawning: A Comparison Between Two Closely Related but Socially Different Monkeys.American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Teeth Baring as a Model to Understand Complex Facial Signals in a Tolerant Macaque Species.American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Links Between Variation in Movement-Based Visual Signals and Social Communication Complexity in an Asian Agamid LizardAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Call combination production is linked to the social environment in Western Australian magpies (Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Individual and ecological heterogeneity promote complex communication in social vertebrate group decisions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Benefits but not the dual functions of submissive signals differ between two Malagasy primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Deep learning for automatic facial detection and recognition in Japanese macaques: illuminating social networks.Primates; journal of primatology · 2024Article
- Wild and captive immature orangutans differ in their non-vocal communication with others, but not with their mothers.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2024Article
- Vocal complexity in a socially complex corvid: gradation, diversity and lack of common call repertoire in male rooks.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Social uncertainty promotes signal complexity during approaches in wild chimpanzees (Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Studying the Tonkean macaques of Strasbourg, a tale full of sound and fury.Primates; journal of primatology · 2023Review
- Article
- Neuroendocrine mechanisms contributing to the coevolution of sociality and communication.Frontiers in neuroendocrinology · 2023Review
- Intentional gestural communication amongst red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus).Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Flexible use of contact calls in a species with high fission-fusion dynamics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Coevolution of social and communicative complexity in lemurs.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Social tolerance and interactional opportunities as drivers of gestural redoings in orang-utans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
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10 authors.
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Abstract
We tested the social complexity hypothesis which posits that animals living in complex social environments should use complex communication systems. We focused on two components of vocal complexity: diversity (number of categories of calls) and flexibility (degree of gradation between categories of calls). We compared the acoustic structure of vocal signals in groups of macaques belonging to four species with varying levels of uncertainty (i.e. complexity) in social tolerance (the higher the degree of tolerance, the higher the degree of uncertainty): two intolerant species, Japanese and rhesus macaques, and two tolerant species, Tonkean and crested macaques. We recorded the vocalizations emitted by adult females in affiliative, agonistic and neutral contexts. We analysed several acoustic variables: call duration, entropy, time and frequency energy quantiles. The results showed that tolerant macaques displayed higher levels of vocal diversity and flexibility than intolerant macaques in situations with a greater number of options and consequences, i.e. in agonistic and affiliative contexts. We found no significant differences between tolerant and intolerant macaques in the neutral context where individuals are not directly involved in social interaction. This shows that species experiencing more uncertain social interactions displayed greater vocal diversity and flexibility, which supports the social complexity hypothesis.
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