A major challenge of the Anthropocene is for individuals to adapt to rapidly changing environments. In long-lived species, adaptation will require successful innovations to spread efficiently through social units, emphasising an increasing role of social learning and culture. Given that humans are the most cultural species on the planet, what factors limit or enhance social transfer in other species?
In this project, we studied vervet monkeys are an ideal model species to study knowledge flow due to their social structure, with males dispersing multiple times within their lifetime. The research was conducted on seven groups of wild vervet monkeys at the INKAWU Vervet Project in South Africa. At the individual level, using innovative technology (bio-loggers and molecular tools), we investigated how males adjust to their new physical and social environment following dispersal with respect to dialects and diet, and respectively how groups adapted to migrants. To test how information spreads, we conducted various field experiments including some using novel touchscreen technology. Quantitative models based on the vervet data have been constructed to capture the complex sociality of this primate species both at the group and population levels.
By linking ground-breaking approaches in the wild with modelling work, this project has expended our current knowledge of social information transmission within primate societies. Understanding how information moves in changing environments improves our ability to predict how primates will cope with increasing human impact and an unpredictable future. It also refines our understanding of the uniqueness of cultural transfer in humans.
