scholarly journals Repeatability in the contact calling system of Spix's disc-winged bat ( Thyroptera tricolor )

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 140197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gloriana Chaverri ◽  
Erin H. Gillam

Spix's disc-winged bat ( Thyroptera tricolor ) forms cohesive groups despite using an extremely ephemeral roost, partly due to the use of two acoustic signals that help individuals locate roost sites and group members. While the calls that aid in group cohesion are commonly used, some bats rarely or never produce them. Here, we examine whether the differences observed in the contact calling behaviour of T. tricolor are repeatable; that is, whether individual differences are consistent. We recorded contact calls of individuals in the field and rates and patterns of vocalization. To determine whether measured variables were consistent within individuals, we estimated repeatability ( R ), which compares within-individual to among-individual variance in behavioural traits. Our results show that repeatability for call variables was moderate but significant, and that repeatability was highest for the average number of calls produced ( R =0.46–0.49). Our results demonstrate important individual differences in the contact calling behaviour of T. tricolor ; we discuss how these could be the result of mechanisms such as frequency-dependent selection that favour groups composed of individuals with diverse vocal strategies. Future work should address whether changes in social environment, specifically group membership and social status, affect vocal behaviour.

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1686) ◽  
pp. 20150073 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine McAuliffe ◽  
Yarrow Dunham

A hallmark of human social cognition is the tendency for both adults and children to favour members of their own groups. Critically, this in-group bias exerts a strong influence on cooperative decision-making: people (i) tend to share more with members of their in-group and (ii) differentially enforce fairness norms depending on the group membership of their interaction partners. But why do people show these group biases in cooperation? One possibility is that the enforcement of cooperative norm violations is an evolved mechanism supporting within-group cooperation ( Norms-Focused Hypothesis ). Alternatively, group bias in cooperation could be a by-product of more general affective preferences for in-group members ( Mere Preferences Hypothesis ). Here, we appraise evidence from studies of both adults and children with the goal of understanding whether one of these two accounts is better supported by existing data. While the pattern of evidence is complex, much of it is broadly consistent with the Mere Preferences Hypothesis and little is uniquely supportive of the Norms-Focused Hypothesis. We highlight possible reasons for this complexity and suggest ways that future work can continue to help us understand the important relationship between group bias and cooperation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Furmankiewicz ◽  
Gareth Jones

AbstractCommunication between group members is mediated by a diverse range of signals. Contact calls are produced by many species of birds and mammals to maintain group cohesion and associations among individuals. Contact calls in bats are typically relatively low-frequency social calls, produced only for communication. However, echolocation calls (higher in frequency and used primarily for orientation and prey detection) can also facilitate interaction among individuals and location of conspecifics in the roost. We studied calling behaviour of brown long-eared bats (Plecotus auritus) during return to maternity roosts in response to playbacks of social and echolocation calls. We hypothesised that calling by conspecifics would elicit responses in colony members. Bat responses (inspection flights and social calls production) were significantly highest during social call and echolocation call playbacks than during noise (control) playbacks. We suggest that social calling in maternity roosts of brown long-eared bat evolved to maintain associations among roostmates, rather than to find roosts or roostmates, because this species is strongly faithful to roosts and the social groups and roosts are stable over time and space. Living in a stable social group requires recognition of group members and affiliation of social bonds with group members, features that may be mediated by vocal signals.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
George E. Newman

Perceptions of authenticity (or, inauthenticity) have been shown to affect people’s judgments and behavior across a wide variety of domains. However, there is still ambiguity about how the concept should be defined. This is attributable, at least in part, to a growing list of different “kinds of authenticity” with little discussion of the potential overlaps between them. The goal of this paper is to reduce these various notions of authenticity into a more manageable set of constructs. Building on the work of Newman and Smith (2016a), three broad kinds of authenticity are proposed: Historical, Categorical, and Values authenticity. Two studies then examine the extent to which people’s conceptions of authenticity naturally segment into these three types. Specifically, Study 1 asks participants about the various ways in which they might assess authenticity, whereas Study 2 examines individual differences in sensitivity to different kinds of inauthenticity. The results from both studies indicate a striking degree of convergence in support of these three broad dimensions. Moreover, different populations appear to be differentially concerned about these various ways of evaluating authenticity. The implications of this framework for existing and future work in this area are discussed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-418
Author(s):  
Kate Thompson ◽  
Pippa Brown ◽  
Stephanie Vieira

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe an intervention with a group of homeless men from the Horn of Africa, service users of the Horn of Africa Health and Wellbeing Project in London. The group was conceived by the second author who noted the presence of significant psychosocial issues for her clients, but equally their reluctance to access mainstream mental health or social care services. Design/methodology/approach Designing the group and introducing it to the men involved threw up some challenges which are explored, and the impact of the group on participants is evaluated. Findings Overall both the participants and the facilitators evaluated the group positively and it appeared to have led to lasting change for some of the group members, and this is described. The authors argue that this sort of group may be a more acceptable way to work on psychosocial issues than something more directly focused on mental health intervention. The group protocol is outlined along with suggestions for future work in this area. Originality/value This intervention represents a creative alternative to more mainstream psychological interventions for homeless or exiled men.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110322
Author(s):  
Marcel Montrey ◽  
Thomas R. Shultz

Surprisingly little is known about how social groups influence social learning. Although several studies have shown that people prefer to copy in-group members, these studies have failed to resolve whether group membership genuinely affects who is copied or whether group membership merely correlates with other known factors, such as similarity and familiarity. Using the minimal-group paradigm, we disentangled these effects in an online social-learning game. In a sample of 540 adults, we found a robust in-group-copying bias that (a) was bolstered by a preference for observing in-group members; (b) overrode perceived reliability, warmth, and competence; (c) grew stronger when social information was scarce; and (d) even caused cultural divergence between intermixed groups. These results suggest that people genuinely employ a copy-the-in-group social-learning strategy, which could help explain how inefficient behaviors spread through social learning and how humans maintain the cultural diversity needed for cumulative cultural evolution.


Behaviour ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 140 (7) ◽  
pp. 899-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
◽  

AbstractThe birth of a younger sibling is a normal event in the life of a nonhuman primate, yet commonly it is thought to be a stressful transition for the older sibling. In our previous research, we found that yearling rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) experienced increases in one mild form of distress but no significant increases in overt forms of distress, in spite of significant reductions in mother-yearling interaction. Nevertheless, some individual yearlings were distressed by this transition and here we examine variables that may structure individual differences in distress. We observed 31 yearling rhesus monkeys on Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico, during the month before and month after their siblings' births using focal animal sampling methods. Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), parent-offspring conflict theory (Trivers, 1974), and dynamic assessment models (Bateson, 1994) all predict a relationship between reduction in maternal care and increase in offspring distress, yet no previous study of sibling birth in primates has examined this relationship. We found that the reduction in the proportion of time on the nipple from the month before sibling birth to the month after was related to the rate of geckering (a distress vocalization) after sibling birth, and that the increase in time out of sight of the mother was related to the proportion of time yearlings spent in a tense state after sibling birth. Maternal aggression after sibling birth also was related to the yearlings' rate of geckering. Yearling distress was related to qualities of the mother-yearling relationship, in that yearlings that had relatively greater responsibility for maintaining proximity with their mothers before sibling birth were relatively more tense afterwards. Yearlings displayed increases in play, grooming, and contact with group members other than the mother after sibling birth, suggesting a marked shift toward greater maturity in their social relationships.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sa-kiera Tiarra Jolynn Hudson ◽  
Mina Cikara ◽  
Jim Sidanius

The capacity to empathize with others facilitates prosocial behavior. People’s willingness and capacity to empathize, however, is often contingent upon the target’s group membership – people are less empathic towards those they categorize as out-group members. In competitive or threatening intergroup contexts, people may even feel pleasure (counter-empathy) in response to out-group members’ misfortunes. Social dominance orientation (SDO), or the extent to which people prefer and promote group-based inequalities, is an ideological variable that is associated with a competitive view of the world, increased prejudicial attitudes, and decreased empathy. Thus, higher levels of SDO should be associated with reduced empathy and increased counter-empathy in general, but especially towards those whose subjugation maintains group inequalities. Across three studies we show that among White individuals, higher SDO levels are associated with less empathy, and more counter-empathy in response to others’ good and bad fortunes. More importantly, these reductions in empathy and increases in schadenfreude as a function of SDO were significantly stronger for Asian and Black targets than for in-group White targets when group boundaries were made salient prior to the empathy ratings. Finally, in a fourth study we show that this phenomenon is not dependent upon a history of status differences: higher SDO scores were associated with decreased empathy and increased counter-empathy for competitive out-group (relative to in-group) targets in a novel group setting. We discuss implications of these effects for hierarchy maintenance.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Rosenke ◽  
J. Van den Hurk ◽  
E. Margalit ◽  
H. P. Op de Beeck ◽  
K. Grill-Spector ◽  
...  

AbstractHuman ventral temporal cortex (VTC) is a cortical expanse that performs different functions and computations, but is especially critical for visual categorization. Nevertheless, accumulating evidence shows that category-selective regions persist in VTC in the absence of visual experience – for example, in congenitally blind (CB) participants. Despite this evidence, a large body of previous work comparing functional representations in VTC between sighted and CB participants performed univariate analyses at the group level, which assume a homogeneous population – an assumption that has not been formally tested until the present study. Specifically, using fMRI in CB and sighted participants (male and female), we empirically show that at the group level, distributed category representations in VTC are more reliable in the sighted (when viewing visual stimuli) compared to the CB (when hearing auditorily-substituted visual stimuli). Despite these group differences, there is extensive heterogeneity in VTC category representations in the CB to the point that VTC category representations in a subset of CB participants (some who were born without eyes, but not all) are more similar to sighted individuals compared to other CB participants. Together, our findings support a novel idea that driving factors contributing to the formation of VTC category representations in the blind are subject-specific, which complements factors that may generalize across group members. More broadly, the present findings caution conclusions of homogeneity across subjects within a group when performing group neuroimaging analyses without explicitly quantifying individual differences.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (28) ◽  
pp. eaaz0870
Author(s):  
Andrew T. L. Allan ◽  
Annie L. Bailey ◽  
Russell A. Hill

In behavioral studies, observer effects can be substantial, even for habituated animals, but few studies account for potential observer-related phenomenon empirically. We used wild, habituated chacma baboons to explore two key assumptions of behavioral ecology (i) that observers become a “neutral” stimulus and (ii) that habituation is “equal” across group members. Using flight initiation distance (FID) methods within a personality paradigm, the behavioral responses of baboons suggested that observers were not perceived as neutral but instead viewed as a high-ranking social threat. Habituation was also not equal across group members, with repeatable individual differences more important than contextual factors (e.g., habitat) in determining the distance at which baboons visually oriented or displaced from observers. A strong correlation between individual visual tolerance and displacement tolerance (i.e., convergent validity) indicated a personality trait. We offer several suggestions for how to account for these factors and minimize potential bias in future studies.


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