The MSC Action is titled “Why do individuals cooperate? Exploring the behavioural, cognitive, and hormonal mechanisms governing cooperation in macaques.” The project investigates the evolution of partner choice during cooperation in macaque societies. Cooperation in animal societies is essential as it ensures the survival and reproduction of individuals, thus significantly impacting their fitness. Understanding cooperation among kin and non-kin members in non-human animals can provide us with scientific insights into how humans cooperate and choose their cooperation partners. Despite numerous theoretical explanations, empirical evidence on why and how animals cooperate and select their partners is scarce. Furthermore, in-depth knowledge of the proximate drivers of cooperation can provide critical insights that may benefit a range of disciplines other than life science, such as political science, social science, economics, and comparative psychology. CooPMacaque investigated the proximate mechanisms that underlie cooperation and shed light on the evolution of cooperative interactions.
The project specifically looked at personality, prosociality, and dominance-rank (i.e. asymmetry in resource-holding power) relationships, in predicting partner choice during cooperation. The individual-level information, i.e. personalities, was paramount in applied biological fields, such as welfare science. The project not only built rigorous scientific knowledge on macaque personalities but also proposed animal welfare measures, especially in captivity. Moreover, the “other-regarding behaviour”, i.e. prosociality, was also studied as one of the proximate drivers facilitating cooperation. Finally, cooperative interactions were investigated across different species, emphasising partner choice and its underlying mechanisms (i.e. the abovementioned proxies).
The primary aim of this MSC Action was to address how individuals choose their cooperation partners. I proposed and tested different species of macaques to answer this question due to their close phylogenetic relatedness yet different ‘social tolerance levels’. Formally, the objectives were – (i) investigation of the personalities of macaques, (ii) assessment of prosocial motivations in macaques, (iii) quantification of the hormonal mechanisms of cooperation and finally, (iv) testing cooperation and partner choice across different species of macaques. In addition, an objective was to foster the individual development of the experienced researcher. In this project, the objectives and goals have been addressed via six different work packages (WP): WP1 – behavioural observations and hormonal sampling, WP2 – personality tests, WP3 – prosociality tests, WP4 – cooperation tests, WP5 – Training by attending courses, teaching and supervision of students, and finally WP6 – dissemination of work and outreach.
