Lameira, AR, Santamaría-Bonfil, G, Galeone4,, D, Gamba, M, Hardus, ME, Knott, CD, Morrogh-Bernard, H, Nowak, MG, Campbell-Smith, G and Wich, S (2022) Sociality predicts orangutan vocal phenotype. Nature Ecology and Evolution. ISSN 2397-334X

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Abstract

In humans, individuals’ social setting determines which and how language is acquired. Social seclusion experiments show that sociality also guides vocal development in songbirds and marmoset monkeys, but absence of similar great ape data has been interpreted as support to saltational notions for language origin, even if such laboratorial protocols are unethical with great apes. Here we characterize the repertoire entropy of orangutan individuals and show that in the wild, different degrees of sociality across populations are associated with different ‘vocal personalities’ in the form of distinct regimes of alarm call variants. In high-density populations, individuals are vocally more original and acoustically unpredictable but new call variants are short lived, whereas individuals in low-density populations are more conformative and acoustically consistent but also exhibit more complex call repertoires. Findings provide non-invasive evidence that sociality predicts vocal phenotype in a wild great ape. They prove false hypotheses that discredit great apes as having hardwired vocal development programmes and non-plastic vocal behaviour. Social settings mould vocal output in hominids besides humans.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Q Science > QH Natural history Q Science > QL Zoology
Divisions:	Biological & Environmental Sciences (from Sep 19)
Publisher:	Nature Research
Date Deposited:	25 Mar 2022 16:30
Last Modified:	25 Mar 2022 16:30
DOI or ID number:	10.1038/s41559-022-01689-z
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16549

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