Curious about how primates acquire and process social information to generate social knowledge? 🦧

Check out our new review paper on social evaluation, with a particular focus on the cognitive mechanisms involved in assessing others' skills and competence 👇

🔔 New paper out on Social evaluation of skill and competence in primates

@mariehirel.bsky.social, @williamohearn.bsky.social and @julxf.bsky.social made this happen

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social paper out today in @royalsociety.org Biology Letters. We found adult jackdaws can learn to tolerate usually bullied or ignored juveniles when they provided information about a new foraging resource.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

New paper led by @josharbon.bsky.social. Adults jackdaws often bully youngsters, but we show they can learn to be tolerant and attend to juveniles as sources of information. @uniexecec.bsky.social. Funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk & @swbiodtp.bsky.social

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

So happy to see my first PhD paper out royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

With my amazing supervisor @robinmorrison.bsky.social and the @savinggorillas.bsky.social, we examined female dispersal decisions in mountain gorillas.

When female gorillas leave one social group and join another, they tend to seek out groups with other females that they've lived with in the past, showing the power of long-term relationships.

Our new article is out! We explored how early life social experiences and age affect social connectedness measures later in life for captive female olive baboons. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions / want to discuss anything 😊🐒 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Very excited to see our paper using historical data to infer toothed whale lifespans published this week in the Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society (@biojlinnsoc.bsky.social)

doi.org/10.1093/biol...

w. @darrencroft.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social @mialybkaer.bsky.social, Dan Franks

My first co-author paper is out in Current Biology!

In this study, led by Daniela Perez and Serena Ding, we show that nematode self-assembling towers occur in nature and can serve as a collective dispersal mechanism 🪱

Check out a video where Daniela explains the findings and the paper here 👇

Postdoc job alert! I'm hiring a 3-yr postdoc to work on our Social Modifiers of Primate Lifespans grant. Job info and how to apply below. Deadline June 1. Pls share! jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

Thrilled to have the 1st project in my @snsf-ch.bsky.social Ambizione fellowship in @pnas.org this week. With Vic Martignac, @samellisq.bsky.social and @savinggorillas.bsky.social we asked what is a good social environment for a gorilla? And the answer was complicated... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Well done @macaelaskelton.bsky.social, our MacaqueNet technician extraodinaire 💚

A terrific thanks to all co-authors @julxf.bsky.social @fededalpesco.bsky.social, funding sources @dfg.de, @daadworldwide.bsky.social, and collaborators like Tiergarten Nurnberg #bestbaboons @royalsociety.org (8/8)

Overall, our study highlights that information about the foraging skills of group members can be used flexibly to inform social strategies using simple cognitive processes (7/8)

Oddly, despite eating 40% of the food, males did not behave differently toward the lever-pulling-males. Suggesting male-male relationships in Guinea baboons already enable access to one another’s food, and revealing a stark difference in competition between the sexes (6/8)

Interestingly, female behavior returned to baseline after the food box stopped appearing. Indicating their response was not based on a reassessment of the male’s skills or competence, but rather a response to the short term benefits they received from his lever pulling (5/8)

We found that females in the one-male-units of the lever-pulling-males groomed him 10 times more often and started 4 times more fights with one another, competing with one another over access to the male and the food that a close relationship with him granted (4/8)

We measured how much each individual ate from the reward as well as all social interactions directed at our lever-pulling-males in the weeks before, during, and after daily box presentations in order to detect any changes in their treatment (3/8)

To ask our question we manipulated the foraging skills of one male per group by giving them, and them alone, the ability to create a shareable pile of peanuts by pulling the lever on our food box (2/8)

BEHOLD THE FLAGSHIP PAPER OF MY PHD! 🚢 I trained wild and zoo housed Guinea baboons to pull a lever for peanuts to test whether they monitored the foraging skills of others and used the information to inform their social choices 🧵 (1/9) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...