Percorrer por autor "Forss, Sofia"
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- Behavioral flexibility and its drivers in semi-urban vervet monkeysPublication . Barnes, Paige; Robira, Benjamin; Mercier, Stéphanie; Forss, SofiaPhylogenetic comparisons suggest that behavioral flexibility facilitates success in urban environments. It remains less clear whether urbanization fosters cognitive skills that require flexibility, or whether successful individuals in urban environments simply apply pre-evolved skills to solve new problems. To investigate whether variation in anthropogenic experience drives behavioral flexibility required to solve a new technical problem, we presented 42 semi-urban vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) with a 3-phase foraging experiment. Each monkey's tendency to forage on human structures for food was measured to assess their exposure to human environments. We then used a sequential decision-tree-based probabilistic model to describe the series of monkeys’ actions when attempting the task, quantifying 3 behavioral flexibility traits: switch tendency (shifting between known solutions between trials), innovativeness (ability to use unknown solutions), and learning sensitivity (ability to repeat known solutions). We found that individuals' switch tendency and innovativeness were not explained by anthropogenic experience and that the 3 traits were mostly unrelated to each other. Moreover, neither switch tendency, nor innovativeness predicted monkeys’ human food consumption in this habitat. Thus, our study suggests that behavioral flexibility is not driven by anthropogenic foraging experience. Contrasting with the hypothesis that urbanization selects for behavioral flexibility, our findings instead imply that vervet monkeys already had sufficient behavioral flexibility and cognitive capacities to successfully exploit the urban habitat.
- A comparison of tool-use flexibility between captive chimpanzees and bonobosPublication . Bandini, Elisa; Harrison, Rachel; Hrubesch, Christine; Forss, SofiaDespite chimpanzees and bonobos sharing close phylogenetic ties to humans, chimpanzees are the more common model species in multiple fields of comparative research. One reason for this bias is the variation in tool repertoire size observed between the two species. Previous studies have examined the factors driving this difference, but few have targeted flexibility in how tools are used. We studied bonobos and chimpanzees under similar conditions in captivity, thus excluding any ecological variation present in these species’ natural habitats. We examined whether the species differed in their ability to switch between tools, a trait that may facilitate tool innovation in primates. To do so, we provided the apes with a task that required switching tool type from a rigid stick to a bendable rope to forage successfully. Our data suggest that there are no significant differences in tool-use performance between chimpanzees and bonobos in captivity. However, we found significant differences in the species’ exploration tendencies. While chimpanzees fixed their attention on stick tools, bonobos switched their attention more easily towards the rope, potentially due to less functional fixedness. We also found significant within-species differences between institutions. These findings suggest that future research should disentangle intrinsic flexibility in exploration and account for institution and group level effects.