Publications by authors named "Julie Duboscq"
Article Synopsis
- In this study, researchers examined the relationship between hierarchical structure and the distribution of fitness-related benefits in primate social groups, focusing on how dominance ranks influence access to resources.
- They tested the hypothesis that the steepness of hierarchy within groups would predict variations in these benefits, analyzing data from 27 primate species using various ranking methods.
- The results revealed that hierarchy steepness did not affect the connection between dominance rank and access to benefits like fecundity and survival, implying that other behavioral strategies may be critical in resource acquisition beyond just winning interactions.
Article Synopsis
- Detecting predators is crucial for survival, and the Snake Detection Theory (SDT) posits that primates evolved specialized skills to spot snakes, a longstanding threat.
- Recent research involved Tonkean and rhesus macaques to assess their abilities in identifying various predators through an oddity task that measured their reaction times and success rates over 400,000 trials.
- Findings revealed that macaques were quicker at identifying geometric shapes than animals, and showed similar detection abilities for snakes and other predators, challenging the idea that snakes uniquely capture primate attention.
Article Synopsis
- The social complexity hypothesis suggests that animal species with more intricate social structures develop more sophisticated communication methods.
- A study on three macaque species (crested, Barbary, and rhesus) found that crested macaques, known for their social tolerance, exhibited more diverse facial expressions compared to the less tolerant Barbary and rhesus macaques.
- Results showed that while rhesus macaques used facial expressions more specifically based on context, crested macaques displayed greater unpredictability in their facial behaviors, supporting the idea that social complexity influences communication complexity.
Article Synopsis
- Group living can benefit individuals, but it also increases the risk of pathogen transmission due to more social contacts that lead to higher parasite abundance.
- The study focused on Japanese macaques to explore how social network centrality (connections and interactions) relates to gastrointestinal helminth infection intensity measured by egg counts in feces.
- The results indicated that while network centrality correlated with infection intensity at the whole group level, this correlation weakened and lost statistical significance when only subsets of the group were analyzed, suggesting that excluding parts of the population affects overall findings.
Article Synopsis
- Understanding facial signals helps us grasp the evolution and function of communication through facial expressions in humans and other species.
- The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) measures facial movements, but there's a need for better analysis tools to interpret and share findings.
- 'NetFACS' is a new statistical package that analyzes combinations of facial movements (AUs) as a network, revealing insights about facial communication in humans and animals, while promoting a more flexible approach to studying these signals.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates the social structure of female macaques, focusing on dominance and grooming patterns, to understand how evolutionary relationships influence these behaviors.
- Researchers analyzed 34-38 datasets from 10 macaque species to assess the strength of phylogenetic signals in dominance and grooming traits, finding that dominance traits had moderate-strong phylogenetic signals while grooming traits showed moderate-weak signals.
- The findings suggest that larger macaque groups tend to have more modular social networks, indicating that group size and living conditions affect these social structures, with dominance networks showing greater evolutionary consistency than grooming networks.
Article Synopsis
- The study explores various hypotheses that explain self-directed behaviors like scratching and self-grooming in female Japanese macaques, including parasite load, environmental conditions, and social factors.
- Researchers conducted observations and used statistical models to investigate the impact of lice load, social dynamics, and environmental factors on these behaviors.
- Results indicated a strong connection between scratching and ectoparasite load, while self-grooming was influenced by social grooming, dominance rank, and social interactions, suggesting a complex interplay between biological and social factors.
Article Synopsis
- Animal societies widely utilize social information to influence behaviors within their groups.
- The article reviews social diffusion experiments that demonstrate how information spreads among animals, including factors that can promote or inhibit this transmission.
- It explores various mechanisms affecting social information sharing, such as cognitive abilities, social competencies, and network constraints, aiming to address both practical and theoretical questions around this phenomenon.
Article Synopsis
- Social structures can impact disease risk by influencing how close individuals are and how often they interact, which is particularly relevant for primates with complex social networks.
- A study on Japanese macaques used social network analysis to identify how relationships within the group affect the transmission of a theoretical infectious agent, finding that more central individuals transmit infections faster and get infected sooner.
- However, the research showed that in some cases, the spread of disease in these macaque networks did not significantly differ from random networks, suggesting that individual characteristics may not always play a crucial role in disease transmission.
Article Synopsis
- - Lice, which are ectoparasites, are transmitted socially among female Japanese macaques, and their spread is influenced by the macaques' contact with each other during grooming.
- - A study tested two predictions about the relationship between social grooming and lice load: one suggesting central females would have more lice due to their contacts, and another suggesting they would have fewer due to increased grooming.
- - Results showed that more social interactions correlated with lower lice loads in winter and summer, contradicting the idea that more contact means more lice, and highlighting how grooming can reduce lice burden, influenced by seasonal variations and the biology of both the parasites and macaques.
Article Synopsis
- In primate social structures, female influence is key, leading to diverse systems that require examination of their consistency and flexibility across species and environments.
- Macaques serve as an ideal example for this study due to their range of social styles, classified from despotic to tolerant, with a focus on the lesser-studied tolerant species like crested macaques.
- The research found that female crested macaques exhibit a tolerant social style characterized by low intensity and reconciliatory behaviors, aligning with other tolerant macaque populations, thus enhancing our understanding of their social dynamics in natural settings.
Enduring positive social bonds between individuals are crucial for humans' health and well being. Similar bonds can be found in a wide range of taxa, revealing the evolutionary origins of humans' social bonds. Evidence suggests that these strong social bonds can function to buffer the negative effects of living in groups, but it is not known whether they also function to minimize predation risk.
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- - The text discusses the typical birthing behavior of mammals, highlighting that parturition commonly occurs when the animals are resting and in safe environments.
- - It reports the first direct observation of a wild baby crested black macaque being born during the day in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.
- - The text also explores how the timing of birth may serve as a reproductive strategy for female mammals within an evolutionary context.