Expressed and understood gestural repertoires of wild bonobos (Pan paniscus)
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Abstract
Research on great ape gestural communication has hitherto prioritised the signaller, focusing on the expressed repertoire, the set of gesture types that an individual deploys. In this study of wild bonobos (Pan paniscus), we also examine the understood repertoire, the set of gesture types that a recipient understands: a recipient understands a gesture if they respond to the signaller with an Apparently Satisfactory Outcome (ASO). Combining the understood and expressed repertoires substantially expands an individual’s overall repertoire. Hence, we propose that including the understood repertoire better represents an individual’s actual communicative repertoire, and may for the first time reveal gesture types received exclusively by specific subsets of individuals. Significant differences between expressed and understood repertoires might result from two things: (1) gestures are ritualised between signallers and recipients and may therefore be unidirectional in some cases, or (2) the circumstances of use differ among age-sex groups, limiting the need for an individual to use a certain gesture type. In the latter, we expect consistency in particular age-sex groups whereas unidirectional comprehension as a result of ritualization would predict random distribution among individuals. We further compare our dataset with and without gesture instances occurring in play, as play may be a context in which individuals deploy gestures that they rarely or never use otherwise. Assessing the understood repertoire is a useful tool for animal communication researchers, not only allowing shorter study-periods, but also to discover gesture types specific to subsets of individuals, which may reveal much about a species’ social behaviour.
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2016. Expressed and understood gestural repertoires of wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) PeerJ Preprints 4:e1819v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1819v1Author comment
This is an abstract which has been accepted for the "Chimpanzees in Context" symposium.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Kirsty E Graham conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Catherine Hobaiter conceived and designed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper, inter-observer reliability.
Richard W Byrne conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Animal Ethics
The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
School of Psychology & Neuroscience Ethics Committee, approved for 3 years from 20/11/2013.
Project title: Gestural communication in wild bonobos (Pan paniscus)
Researcher's name: Kirsty Graham
Supervisor's name: Richard Byrne
Field Study Permissions
The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
Ministere de Recherche Scientifique et Technologie, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Permis de recherche No MIN.ESURE/SG-RST/002/2014
Permis de recherche No 002/MIN.RST/SG/180/002/2015
Funding
University of St Andrews, 600th Anniversary Scholarship. Wenner-Gren Foundations, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (Grant number 8950). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.