William O'Hearn

Loved presenting (via wild gesticulation) at the Society of Marine Mammalogy - UK and Ireland student chapter conference this week! Awesome to see such cool work being done by ECRs. #UKIRSC26 #marinemammals #research

Late-reporting, but last year some of our CRABbers headed up to Edinburgh to present their posters at the @asab.org Winter meeting. Well done all! @libbychaps.bsky.social @charli-ocean.bsky.social and @ Manuela Carona R

Todays FINE
2nd December, Cyril Grüter, University of Oxford, UK

Title: Evolution of Inter-Group Social Dynamics and Multilevel Organization in Primates
 
Zoom link opens at 16 :45 /10:45
urosario.zoom.us/j/87594920134
 
YouTube channel. www.youtube.com/channel/UClX...

🚨Job Alert plz RT!

Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!

We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals

Open-rank

apply.interfolio.com/178146

Excited to share our methods preprint on CapuchinAI! 🐒💻

We built a field touchscreen + real-time facial recognition system (YOLOv7) that lets wild capuchins “log in” and complete individualized cognitive tasks.
@emoryuniversity.bsky.social @gatechengineers.bsky.social

#PrimateCognition #AI

Each dyad (a, b) moves through four discrete states over time, represented by coloured circles. The dyad remains in a given state for a certain duration, or "holding time", before transitioning to a new state according to state-specific transition probabilities, indicated by arrows showing all possible (non-zero) transitions. Paintings by Sofia M. Pereira & Judith von Nordheim.

New paper!

We propose a framework to empirically study animal social relationships by modelling social network (SN) data as time-series—that is, without the need to aggregate them over time.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Meat transfer patterns reflect the multi-level social system of Guinea baboons Wildlife behavior; Biological sciences; Zoology; Evolutionary biology

New paper out in iScience. We found the pattern of Guinea baboon meat transfers follows the shape of their nested multi-level society. Transfers of meat are more tolerant at the lower levels of the society and are more likely to occur along stronger social relationships. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

The Adaptive Relationships Framework illustrating how broad socioecological pressures shape the social solutions animals use to meet these challenges, and how these lead to social strategies and emergent structures that help them gain access to those solutions.

Social relationships are powerful predictors of fitness across social animals. But *why*?

In our new @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social paper, we outline testable predictions for why relationship quality and quantity adaptively vary across socio-ecological contexts.

tinyurl.com/55dnkeh7

Curious about how primates acquire and process social information to generate social knowledge? 🦧

Check out our new review paper on social evaluation, with a particular focus on the cognitive mechanisms involved in assessing others' skills and competence 👇

Social evaluation of skill and competence in primates Social life is a continuous interplay of observing and interacting with conspecifics, predicting their behavior, and responding to their actions. This…

🔔 New paper out on Social evaluation of skill and competence in primates

@mariehirel.bsky.social, @williamohearn.bsky.social and @julxf.bsky.social made this happen

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Wild jackdaws learn to tolerate juveniles to exploit new foraging opportunities | Biology Letters Social tolerance can enhance access to resources and is thought to be crucial in facilitating the evolution of cooperation, social cognition and culture, but it is unknown whether animals can optimize...

New @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social paper out today in @royalsociety.org Biology Letters. We found adult jackdaws can learn to tolerate usually bullied or ignored juveniles when they provided information about a new foraging resource.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

New paper led by @josharbon.bsky.social. Adults jackdaws often bully youngsters, but we show they can learn to be tolerant and attend to juveniles as sources of information. @uniexecec.bsky.social. Funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk & @swbiodtp.bsky.social

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Dispersed female networks: female gorillas’ inter-group relationships influence dispersal decisions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Dispersal is a fundamental aspect of many animal societies, impacting gene flow, knowledge transmission, culture and individual fitness. However, little is known about the information individuals use when dispersing. Mountain gorillas exhibit a flexible ...

So happy to see my first PhD paper out royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

With my amazing supervisor @robinmorrison.bsky.social and the @savinggorillas.bsky.social, we examined female dispersal decisions in mountain gorillas.

Study finds female mountain gorillas prefer to join 'buddies' When female gorillas leave one social group and join another, they tend to seek out groups with other females that they've lived with in the past, showing the power of long-term relationships.

When female gorillas leave one social group and join another, they tend to seek out groups with other females that they've lived with in the past, showing the power of long-term relationships.

The effects of early life rearing experiences and age on sociality in captive olive baboons (Papio anubis) - Primates Social connections within primate groups are continuously changing, and an individual’s connectedness within their social network can have important consequences on morbidity and mortality. Here, we e...

Our new article is out! We explored how early life social experiences and age affect social connectedness measures later in life for captive female olive baboons. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions / want to discuss anything 😊🐒 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Very excited to see our paper using historical data to infer toothed whale lifespans published this week in the Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society (@biojlinnsoc.bsky.social)

doi.org/10.1093/biol...

w. @darrencroft.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social @mialybkaer.bsky.social, Dan Franks

My first co-author paper is out in Current Biology!

In this study, led by Daniela Perez and Serena Ding, we show that nematode self-assembling towers occur in nature and can serve as a collective dispersal mechanism 🪱

Check out a video where Daniela explains the findings and the paper here 👇

Postdoc job alert! I'm hiring a 3-yr postdoc to work on our Social Modifiers of Primate Lifespans grant. Job info and how to apply below. Deadline June 1. Pls share! jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

Group traits moderate the relationship between individual social traits and fitness in gorillas | PNAS Evidence across a broad range of disciplines has demonstrated how individuals’ social environments can impact their health, lifespan, reproduction,...

Thrilled to have the 1st project in my @snsf-ch.bsky.social Ambizione fellowship in @pnas.org this week. With Vic Martignac, @samellisq.bsky.social and @savinggorillas.bsky.social we asked what is a good social environment for a gorilla? And the answer was complicated... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Well done @macaelaskelton.bsky.social, our MacaqueNet technician extraodinaire 💚

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A terrific thanks to all co-authors @julxf.bsky.social @fededalpesco.bsky.social, funding sources @dfg.de, @daadworldwide.bsky.social, and collaborators like Tiergarten Nurnberg #bestbaboons @royalsociety.org (8/8)

Overall, our study highlights that information about the foraging skills of group members can be used flexibly to inform social strategies using simple cognitive processes (7/8)

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Oddly, despite eating 40% of the food, males did not behave differently toward the lever-pulling-males. Suggesting male-male relationships in Guinea baboons already enable access to one another’s food, and revealing a stark difference in competition between the sexes (6/8)

Interestingly, female behavior returned to baseline after the food box stopped appearing. Indicating their response was not based on a reassessment of the male’s skills or competence, but rather a response to the short term benefits they received from his lever pulling (5/8)

a man and a woman sitting on a couch with the words uh oh they 're getting competitive on the bottom ALT: a man and a woman sitting on a couch with the words uh oh they 're getting competitive on the bottom

We found that females in the one-male-units of the lever-pulling-males groomed him 10 times more often and started 4 times more fights with one another, competing with one another over access to the male and the food that a close relationship with him granted (4/8)

a couple of cartoon characters standing next to each other in a room ALT: a couple of cartoon characters standing next to each other in a room

We measured how much each individual ate from the reward as well as all social interactions directed at our lever-pulling-males in the weeks before, during, and after daily box presentations in order to detect any changes in their treatment (3/8)

To ask our question we manipulated the foraging skills of one male per group by giving them, and them alone, the ability to create a shareable pile of peanuts by pulling the lever on our food box (2/8)

BEHOLD THE FLAGSHIP PAPER OF MY PHD! 🚢 I trained wild and zoo housed Guinea baboons to pull a lever for peanuts to test whether they monitored the foraging skills of others and used the information to inform their social choices 🧵 (1/9) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...