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Social relationships and greetings in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): use of signal combinations

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Abstract

Signals of submission, so-called ‘greetings’, represent an important tool for the regulation of social life in primates. In chimpanzees, vocalizations and gestures are commonly employed to communicate greetings, however, the topic of signal complexity (i.e., combinations of signals) during greeting instances has been neglected by research to date. Here, we investigate combinatorial possibilities in vocal greetings in a free-ranging group of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and study how greeter sex, rank relationship between an interacting pair, and strength of the social bond of a greeting dyad influence signal complexity. Results show that the social bond and the dominance distance between individuals engaged in a greeting bout are important determiners for vocal combinations. The findings indicate that greeting signals in chimpanzees, like other vocal signals of the species, can become subject to social influences.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to the memory of J. Lwanga. We are indebted to J. C. Mitani, D. Watts and K. Langergraber for the opportunity to carry out research at Ngogo. Without their continuous support this work would not have been possible. We thank the Makerere University Biological Field Station (MUBFS; Uganda), the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST; Uganda) and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA; Uganda) for granting permission to conduct research at Kibale National Park. We are indebted to the whole staff at Ngogo, particularly D. Kyalikunda, for assisting us and sharing their deep knowledge on the chimpanzee community and the forest. We furthermore thank A. ter Maat for assisting with the acoustical analyses, C. Neumann for his R-script on Elo-ranking, and R. Mundry for his invaluable statistical help with the models. This research was funded by a Sofja-Kovalevskaja-Award of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation (Germany) to S. P. The work described in this manuscript has complied with the ethical standards in the treatment of animals with the guidelines laid down by the Primate Society of Japan, NIH (US), EC Guide for animal experiments, and the legal requirements concerning animal treatment and welfare in Uganda and Germany. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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  1. Department of Foreign Languages, College of Education, Seoul National University, Gwanak-ro 1, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea

    Eva Maria Luef

  2. Institute of Cognitive Science, Comparative Biocognition, University Osnabrück, Wachsbleiche 27, 49090, Osnabrück, Germany

    Simone Pika

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  1. Eva Maria Luef
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Correspondence to Eva Maria Luef.

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Luef, E.M., Pika, S. Social relationships and greetings in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): use of signal combinations. Primates 60, 507–515 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-019-00758-5

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