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Higher social tolerance is associated with more complex facial behavior in macaques

View ORCID ProfileAlan V. Rincon, View ORCID ProfileBridget M. Waller, View ORCID ProfileJulie Duboscq, View ORCID ProfileAlexander Mielke, Claire Pérez, View ORCID ProfilePeter R. Clark, View ORCID ProfileJérôme Micheletta
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.07.519469
Alan V. Rincon
1Department of Psychology, Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK
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  • For correspondence: avrincon1@gmail.com jerome.micheletta@port.ac.uk
Bridget M. Waller
2Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Social Interaction, Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG1 4BU, UK
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Julie Duboscq
3UMR7206 Eco-Anthropology, CNRS-MNHN-Université Paris Cité, Paris 75016, France
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Alexander Mielke
4Origins of Mind Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK
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Claire Pérez
1Department of Psychology, Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK
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Peter R. Clark
1Department of Psychology, Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK
5School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK
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Jérôme Micheletta
1Department of Psychology, Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK
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  • For correspondence: avrincon1@gmail.com jerome.micheletta@port.ac.uk
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Abstract

The social complexity hypothesis for communicative complexity posits that animal societies with more complex social systems require more complex communication systems. We tested the social complexity hypothesis on three macaque species that vary in their degree of social tolerance and complexity. We coded facial behavior in >3000 social interactions across three social contexts (aggressive, submissive, affiliative) in 389 animals, using the Facial Action Coding System for macaques (MaqFACS). We quantified communicative complexity using three measures of uncertainty: entropy, specificity, and prediction error. We found that the relative entropy of facial behavior was higher for the more tolerant crested macaques as compared to the less tolerant Barbary and rhesus macaques across all social contexts, indicating that crested macaques more frequently use a higher diversity of facial behavior. The context specificity of facial behavior was higher in rhesus as compared to Barbary and crested macaques, demonstrating that Barbary and crested macaques used facial behavior more flexibly across different social contexts. Finally, a random forest classifier predicted social context from facial behavior with highest accuracy for rhesus and lowest for crested, indicating there is higher uncertainty and complexity in the facial behavior of crested macaques. Overall, our results support the social complexity hypothesis.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Typo in abstract.

  • https://github.com/avrincon/macaque-facial-complexity

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted February 14, 2023.
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Higher social tolerance is associated with more complex facial behavior in macaques
Alan V. Rincon, Bridget M. Waller, Julie Duboscq, Alexander Mielke, Claire Pérez, Peter R. Clark, Jérôme Micheletta
bioRxiv 2022.12.07.519469; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.07.519469
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Higher social tolerance is associated with more complex facial behavior in macaques
Alan V. Rincon, Bridget M. Waller, Julie Duboscq, Alexander Mielke, Claire Pérez, Peter R. Clark, Jérôme Micheletta
bioRxiv 2022.12.07.519469; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.07.519469

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