| Autor: |
Nellissen L; UMR7206 Ecoanthropologie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle/University Paris Cité, Musée de l'Homme , Paris, France.; Institute of Biology, University of Neuchatel , Neuchâtel, Switzerland., Fuh T; Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas, World Wide Fund for Nature , Bangui, Central African Republic.; World Wide Fund for Nature , Berlin, Germany., Zuberbühler K; Institute of Biology, University of Neuchatel , Neuchâtel, Switzerland.; School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews , St Andrews, Scotland, UK., Masi S; UMR7206 Ecoanthropologie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle/University Paris Cité, Musée de l'Homme , Paris, France. |
| Abstrakt: |
The ability to coordinate actions is of vital importance for group-living animals, particularly in relation to travel. Groups can only remain cohesive if members possess a cooperative mechanism to overcome differences in individual priorities and social power when coordinating departures. To better understand how hominids achieve spatio-temporally coordinated group movements, we investigated vocally initiated group departures in three habituated groups of western gorillas ( Gorilla gorilla ) in the Central African Republic. The large sexual dimorphism of gorillas has led to the untested assumption that the silverback males are the sole decision-makers in gorilla groups, although there are also observations that suggest otherwise. To address this, we analysed the direction and timing of group departures and found that high-ranking individuals (silverbacks and high-ranking females) were more successful in indicating the direction of future travel than others, but that the timing of departure was the apparent result of a cumulative vocal voting process among all adult group members. Our findings illustrate that even in species with a large sexual size dimorphism, travel decisions can be taken collectively via a consensus-building process. |
