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. 2023 Feb 2;26(2):106098.
doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106098. eCollection 2023 Feb 17.

Do golden snub-nosed monkeys use deceptive alarm calls during competition for food?

Tiantian Wang  1   2 , Yuchen Kong  1 , He Zhang  1 , Yuhang Li  1 , Rong Hou  1 , Derek W Dunn  1 , Xiduo Hou  1 , Kang Huang  1 , Baoguo Li  1
Affiliations

Do golden snub-nosed monkeys use deceptive alarm calls during competition for food?

Tiantian Wang et al. iScience. .

Abstract

Tactical deception can be beneficial for social animals during intra-specific competition. However, the use of tactical deception in wild mammals is predicted to be rare. We tested whether a food-provisioned free-ranging band of golden snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana) use alarm calls in a functionally deceptive manner to gain access to food resources, whether the rate of deceptive alarm calls varies among individuals, and whether there are any counter-deception behaviors. We used a hexagonal camera array consisting of 10 cameras to record videos during feeding, which allowed us to identify individual alarm callers. We found evidence that these monkeys use deceptive alarms and that adult females were more likely to use such calls than other individuals. The monkeys increased their rates of response to alarm calls when competition for food was high. However, we found no direct evidence of any counter-deception strategies.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Ethology; Zoology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

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Graphical abstract
Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparisons of RRDA rates (A) Histogram of scaled times of RRDAs. The violin plot of RRDA rate (#RRDAs per individual per hour) in different seasons (B) and in different age-sex classes (C) with the dashed lines denoting quartiles.
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The arrange of feeding site and carema array (A) Schematic diagram of the hexagonal camera array and (B) photograph of the feeding site.
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Synchronization of camera clocks (A) Alignment of waveforms of the synchronization signals. (B) The waveform of a sine wave that lasts for 5 periods. (C) The high-frequency harmonic wave at the crest of the first period. The black lines are the original signal, with the colored lines being the signals received by different channels. The significant hollows in the signals received are marked by circles.
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A photo of feeding site with the reference objects marked by the circles Partially enlarged are the camera (a) and the surveying nail (b).
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An illustration of coordination transformation (A) the camera coordinate system and (B) the polar image coordinate and pixel coordinate systems.
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An illustration of sound source localization and mark up in the combined multi-view video
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The waveforms of the received synchronization signals (A) Waveforms of ten cameras around the high-frequency sine waves for Step1(). (B) A partial magnification of 25Hz waveforms; the top three rows show waveform received by cameras #1-#3, and the bottom row shows the original waveform.
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Fitting the alarm call intervals by two exponential distributions (A) The probability density function of intervals of response (gray) and non-response (black) alarm calls; (B) the histogram of intervals of alarm calls.
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The fitted probability density functions of intervals of response (gray) and non-response (black) alarm calls of four candidate models
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The negative predictive value as a function of cut-off values of four candidate models
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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