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A socioecological perspective on primate cognition, past and present

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Abstract

The papers in this special issue examine the relationship between social and ecological cognition in primates. We refer to the intersection of these two domains as socioecological cognition. Examples of socioecological cognition include socially learned predator alarm calls and socially sensitive foraging decisions. In this review we consider how primate cognition may have been shaped by the interaction of social and ecological influences in their evolutionary history. The ability to remember distant, out-of-sight locations is an ancient one, shared by many mammals and widespread among primates. It seems some monkeys and apes have evolved the ability to form more complex representations of resources, integrating “what-where-how much” information. This ability allowed anthropoids to live in larger, more cohesive groups by minimizing competition for limited resources between group members. As group size increased, however, competition for resources also increased, selecting for enhanced social skills. Enhanced social skills in turn made a more sophisticated relationship to the environment possible. The interaction of social and ecological influences created a spiraling effect in the evolution of primate intelligence. In contrast, lemurs may not have evolved the ability to form complex representations which would allow them to consider the size and location of resources. This lack in lemur ecological cognition may restrict the size of frugivorous lemur social groups, thereby limiting the complexity of lemur social life. In this special issue, we have brought together two review papers, five field studies, and one laboratory study to investigate the interaction of social and ecological factors in relation to foraging. Our goal is to stimulate research that considers social and ecological factors acting together on cognitive evolution, rather than in isolation. Cross fertilization of experimental and observational studies from captivity and the field is important for increasing our understanding of this relationship.

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Acknowledgments

Most of the papers in this issue are from a Symposium on Socioecological Cognition presented at the XX Congress of the International Primatological Society, held in Torino, Italy, in August 2004. We thank all the participants in the Symposium on Socioecological Cognition for their contributions. We are grateful to Tatiana Czeschlik for collaborating with us on this special issue. We also thank Eric Delson and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.

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  1. Department of Basic Sciences and Craniofacial Biology, New York University College of Dentistry, 345 East 24th Street, New York, NY, 10010-4086, USA

    Elena Cunningham

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

    Charles Janson

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Correspondence to Elena Cunningham.

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This contribution is part of the Special Issue “A Socioecological Perspective on Primate Cognition”.

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Cunningham, E., Janson, C. A socioecological perspective on primate cognition, past and present. Anim Cogn 10, 273–281 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-007-0078-3

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