Description of Activity
Gave a presentation entitled 'Do more complex macaque societies use more complex facial behaviour?'The social complexity hypothesis for communicative complexity (SCHCC) posits that animal societies with a more complex social system will evolve more complex communication systems. Here, we test the SCHCC across three macaque species, rhesus, Barbary, and crested macaques, that vary in their degree of social tolerance and complexity. Macaques regularly use facial signals as a communication tool and previous studies have quantified complexity in facial communication by the number of different expressions. However, facial behaviour is fluid and subtle complexities may be lost when classifying facial signals into discrete categories. In this study, we coded facial behaviour at the level of individual muscle movements using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) developed for each macaque species. We FACS coded facial behaviour in >1500 social interactions across three different social contexts (aggressive, submissive, affiliative). By using a combination of bootstrapping techniques and network analysis (NetFACS), we describe and quantify the complexity of facial behaviour of the different macaque species. Using network analysis at the level of individual muscle movements gives us a flexible approach to the study of facial signals that could be generalized and used in a unified multimodal approach to the study of communication.
Period | 2 Jun 2022 |
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Event title | Joint Conference of the European Federation for Primatology and the Gesellschaft fur Primatologie |
Event type | Conference |
Location | Arnhem, NetherlandsShow on map |
Degree of Recognition | International |
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Projects
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NetFACS: Rethinking complexity in facial communication systems
Project: Research