The researcher will investigate how a group of wild Tibetan macaques at Mt. Huangshan National Park in Anhui, China use collective decision making in an effort to stay cohesive and reap the benefits of sociality. The research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Jin-Hua Li and Dr. Dongpo Xia of Anhui University, who are notable experts of Tibetan macaques. The hosts will provide aid in identification of individuals and essential information regarding age, sex, dominance rank and kin relationships. The award will allow for the completion of novel research in collective decision making. The research will lead to the discovery of collective decision making models that can be applied to a variety of animal taxa and an increased understanding of complex group movement which allowed for the expansion and success of humans.
The researcher will examine the mechanisms driving collective decision making during group movement in the YA1 group of wild, but provisioned Tibetan macaques. Specifically, the researcher will use a combination of all occurrence and focal animal sampling to investigate the utilization of a quorum threshold during collective movement, and how this quorum is related to the number of fans an individual has. A fan will be defined as an individual who joined within the first half of a movement (based on time) during at least 70% of movements initiated by a specific individual. The researcher will determine whether the movement initiator?s number of fans effects movement efficiency, what makes an individual a fan and what factors cause an individual to have more fans. The researcher hypothesizes that a quorum threshold of 60 percent of the group exists, leaders with more consistent followers will drive a more efficient movement, consistent followers will be macaques in the core of the social network and dominant females with a greater number of kin will have more fans.
This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.
