ArticleRoyal Society open science2023
Social uncertainty promotes signal complexity during approaches in wild chimpanzees (
Article in Royal Society open science, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Utterance evolution: the road to generative, combinatorial communicators.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Relationship Value, Emotion, and Uncertainty Shape Conflict-Resolution Communication in a Wild Primate.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Turn-taking in grooming interactions of sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys) in the wild.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Call combination order and iterations may shift meaning in sooty mangabey vocal sequences.BMC biology · 2026Article
- Flexible use of multimodal communicative strategies in adult chimpanzees.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Long arcuate fascicle in wild and captive chimpanzees as a potential structural precursor of the language network.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion.Science advances · 2025Article
- Vocal sequence diversity and length remain stable across ontogeny in a catarrhine monkey (Cercocebus atys).Communications biology · 2025Article
- Investigating the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in language evolution: insights from comparative neuroscience.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- Links Between Variation in Movement-Based Visual Signals and Social Communication Complexity in an Asian Agamid LizardAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 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
- Wild and captive immature orangutans differ in their non-vocal communication with others, but not with their mothers.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2024Article
- Social uncertainty promotes signal complexity during approaches in wild chimpanzees (Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Brain structure and function: a multidisciplinary pipeline to study hominoid brain evolution.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The social complexity hypothesis for the evolution of communication posits that complex social environments require greater communication complexity for individuals to effectively manage their relationships. We examined how different socially uncertain contexts, reflecting an increased level of social complexity, relate to variation in signalling within and between two species, which display varying levels of fission-fusion dynamics (sympatric-living chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys, Taï National Park, Ivory Coast). Combined signalling may improve message efficacy, notably when involving different perception channels, thus may increase in moments of high social uncertainty. We examined the probability of individuals to emit no signal, single or multisensory or combined (complex) signals, during social approaches which resulted in non-agonistic outcomes. In both species, individuals were more likely to use more combined and multisensory signals in post-conflict approaches with an opponent than in other contexts. The clearest impact of social uncertainty on signalling complexity was observed during chimpanzee fusions, where the likelihood of using complex signals tripled relative to other contexts. Overall, chimpanzees used more multisensory signals than mangabeys. Social uncertainty may shape detected species differences in variation in signalling complexity, thereby supporting the hypothesis that social complexity, particularly associated with high fission-fusion dynamics, promotes signalling complexity.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.