Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources
Abstract While foraging, animals have to find potential food sites, remember these sites, and plan the best navigation route. To deal with problems associated with foraging for multiple and patchy resources, primates may employ heuristic strategies to improve foraging success. Until now, no study ha...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer
2024-03-01
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| Series: | Animal Cognition |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-024-01864-8 |
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| author | Dêverton Plácido Xavier Filipa Abreu Antonio Souto Nicola Schiel |
| author_facet | Dêverton Plácido Xavier Filipa Abreu Antonio Souto Nicola Schiel |
| author_sort | Dêverton Plácido Xavier |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract While foraging, animals have to find potential food sites, remember these sites, and plan the best navigation route. To deal with problems associated with foraging for multiple and patchy resources, primates may employ heuristic strategies to improve foraging success. Until now, no study has attempted to investigate experimentally the use of such strategies by a primate in a context involving foraging in large-scale space. Thus, we carried out an experimental field study that aimed to test if wild common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) employ heuristic strategies to efficiently navigate through multiple feeding sites distributed in a large-scale space. In our experiment, we arranged four feeding platforms in a trapezoid configuration with up to 60 possible routes and observe marmosets’ decisions under two experimental conditions. In experimental condition I, all platforms contained the same amount of food; in experimental condition II, the platforms had different amounts of food. According to the number and arrangement of the platforms, we tested two heuristic strategies: the Nearest Neighbor Rule and the Gravity Rule. Our results revealed that wild common marmosets prefer to use routes consistent with a heuristic strategy more than expected by chance, regardless of food distribution. The findings also demonstrate that common marmosets seem to integrate different factors such as distance and quantity of food across multiple sites distributed over a large-scale space, employing a combination of heuristic strategies to select the most efficient routes available. In summary, our findings confirm our expectations and provide important insights into the spatial cognition of these small neotropical primates. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-0faf5983c02c4d4690d41f5b3cb68e1d |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1435-9456 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-03-01 |
| publisher | Springer |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Animal Cognition |
| spelling | doaj-art-0faf5983c02c4d4690d41f5b3cb68e1d2025-01-26T12:44:04ZengSpringerAnimal Cognition1435-94562024-03-0127111310.1007/s10071-024-01864-8Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resourcesDêverton Plácido Xavier0Filipa Abreu1Antonio Souto2Nicola Schiel3Laboratory of Theoretical and Applied Ethology, Department of Biology, Federal Rural University of PernambucoLaboratory of Theoretical and Applied Ethology, Department of Biology, Federal Rural University of PernambucoLaboratory of Ethology, Department of Zoology, Federal University of PernambucoLaboratory of Theoretical and Applied Ethology, Department of Biology, Federal Rural University of PernambucoAbstract While foraging, animals have to find potential food sites, remember these sites, and plan the best navigation route. To deal with problems associated with foraging for multiple and patchy resources, primates may employ heuristic strategies to improve foraging success. Until now, no study has attempted to investigate experimentally the use of such strategies by a primate in a context involving foraging in large-scale space. Thus, we carried out an experimental field study that aimed to test if wild common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) employ heuristic strategies to efficiently navigate through multiple feeding sites distributed in a large-scale space. In our experiment, we arranged four feeding platforms in a trapezoid configuration with up to 60 possible routes and observe marmosets’ decisions under two experimental conditions. In experimental condition I, all platforms contained the same amount of food; in experimental condition II, the platforms had different amounts of food. According to the number and arrangement of the platforms, we tested two heuristic strategies: the Nearest Neighbor Rule and the Gravity Rule. Our results revealed that wild common marmosets prefer to use routes consistent with a heuristic strategy more than expected by chance, regardless of food distribution. The findings also demonstrate that common marmosets seem to integrate different factors such as distance and quantity of food across multiple sites distributed over a large-scale space, employing a combination of heuristic strategies to select the most efficient routes available. In summary, our findings confirm our expectations and provide important insights into the spatial cognition of these small neotropical primates.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-024-01864-8Heuristic strategyCallithrix jacchusSpatial navigationTravel routeRoute planning |
| spellingShingle | Dêverton Plácido Xavier Filipa Abreu Antonio Souto Nicola Schiel Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources Animal Cognition Heuristic strategy Callithrix jacchus Spatial navigation Travel route Route planning |
| title | Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources |
| title_full | Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources |
| title_fullStr | Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources |
| title_full_unstemmed | Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources |
| title_short | Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources |
| title_sort | choosing the best way how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources |
| topic | Heuristic strategy Callithrix jacchus Spatial navigation Travel route Route planning |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-024-01864-8 |
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