Maternal effects on the development of vocal communication in wild chimpanzees

Bründl, AC, Girard-Buttoz, C, Bortolato, T, Samuni, L, Grampp, M, Löhrich, T, Tkaczynski, P ORCID: 0000-0003-3207-2132, Wittig, RM and Crockford, C (2022) Maternal effects on the development of vocal communication in wild chimpanzees. iScience, 25 (10). p. 105152. ISSN 2589-0042

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Abstract

Early-life experiences, such as maternal care received, influence adult social integration and survival. We examine what changes to social behavior through ontogeny lead to these lifelong effects, particularly whether early-life maternal environment impacts the development of social communication. Chimpanzees experience prolonged social communication development. Focusing on a central communicative trait, the "pant-hoot" contact call used to solicit social engagement, we collected cross-sectional data on wild chimpanzees (52 immatures and 36 mothers). We assessed early-life socioecological impacts on pant-hoot rates across development, specifically: mothers' gregariousness, age, pant-hoot rates and dominance rank, maternal loss, and food availability, controlling for current maternal effects. We found that early-life maternal gregariousness correlated positively with offspring pant-hoot rates, while maternal loss led to reduced pant-hoot rates across development. Males had steeper developmental trajectories in pant-hoot rates than females. We demonstrate the impact of maternal effects on developmental trajectories of a rarely investigated social trait, vocal production.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Biological sciences; Ethology; Zoology
Subjects:	Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301 Biology Q Science > QL Zoology S Agriculture > SF Animal culture
Divisions:	Biological and Environmental Sciences (from Sep 19)
Publisher:	Cell Press
Date of acceptance:	14 September 2022
Date of first compliant Open Access:	25 October 2022
Date Deposited:	25 Oct 2022 14:37
Last Modified:	05 Jul 2025 13:00
DOI or ID number:	10.1016/j.isci.2022.105152
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/17935

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