Stay Gathered Rather than Scattered: Strategies of Common Marmosets during Agonistic Interactions with Birds in the Atlantic Rain Forest.

To reduce the vulnerability of their small body size, common marmosets live in large and cohesive social groups. Thus, we hypothesized that in order to compensate for small body size and predation risk, individuals of common marmosets will stay gathered rather than scattered when foraging for eggs and/or nestling birds. Furthermore, in order to avoid costly injuries and eventual predation risks, for both sides, the majority of interactions among common marmosets and small birds will not involve direct physical contact. The study was developed in a small fragment of Atlantic Forest in the northeast of Brazil. We recorded a total of 115 interactions between common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) with 7 different bird species. As expected, agonistic interactions were significantly more frequent when the marmosets were gathered. Also, most agonistic interactions by the birds toward common marmosets involved overflights without physical contact. Apparently, the set of avoidance behavior leads to a reduced predation risk for both sides. It appears that dispersed marmosets do not represent an imminent threat that justifies an agonistic reaction by the birds as the latter appear to avoid exposing themselves to unnecessary danger during agonistic interactions, especially when the marmosets are gathered.

Propagation of the loud "tchó" call of golden-backed uakaris, Cacajao melanocephalus, in the black-swamp forests of the upper Amazon.

Arboreal primates use loud vocalisations to transmit information in densely vegetated habitats. These vocalisations are likely to show adaptations to increase their propagation and to transmit information. Golden-backed uakaris, Cacajao melanocephalus, emit a loud vocalization termed the "tchó" call, which seems to function as a contact call and encodes information on the individual signaler and behavioural context. Because the call is often used for communication over relatively large distances, we were interested in its propagation in the wild. The aim of the present study was to investigate the degradation patterns of the tchó call in the flooded igapó forest. We examined via playback experiments how the acoustic parameters of this call changed with increasing distance from the playback speaker. We broadcast 12 tchó calls and rerecorded them along a transect at distances of 10, 20, 40, 80 and 160 m from the speaker in two igapó forest patches in Jaú National Park, Amazonas, Brazil. At 160 m from the speaker, the tchó call degraded in both patches and was barely recordable. Up to a distance of 80 m, the bandwidth and number of harmonics in the call decreased with increasing distance, while the lowest frequency increased. The highest frequency (HF) did not gradually decrease with increasing distance. However, when we compared the HF at distances of 10 and 80 m, we could see a clear decrease in this parameter. Call duration increased compared with the broadcast signal up to 40 m because of reverberation, but decreased at 80 m as the weaker echoes of the call attenuated. These changes may reveal information about the signaler's distance during signal transmission. The frequency of maximum energy (FME) of the tchó call decreased significantly when comparing recordings made at 10 and 80 m. Nevertheless, it did not show a consistent and gradual decrease with increasing rerecording distance (at least up to 80 m). FME remained relatively stable (±50 Hz on average, at least up to 80 m) when compared to the other call parameters, suggesting that the tchó call may be adapted to transmit information with some efficiency throughout the igapó forest.

Brevity is not always a virtue in primate communication.

Semple et al. (Semple et al. in press, Biol. Lett. (doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.1062)) argued that the 'law of brevity' (an inverse relationship between word length and frequency of use) applies not only to human language but also to vocal signalling in non-human primates, because coding efficiency is paramount in both situations. We analysed the frequency of use of signals of different duration in the vocal repertoires of two Neotropical primate species studied in the wild-the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) and the golden-backed uakari (Cacajao melanocephalus). The key prediction of the law of brevity was not supported in either species: although the most frequently emitted calls were relatively brief, they were not the shortest signals in the repertoire. The costs and benefits associated with signals of different duration must be appreciated to understand properly their frequency of use. Although relatively brief vocal signals may be favoured by natural selection in order to minimize energetic costs, the very briefest signals may be ambiguous, contain reduced information or be difficult to detect or locate, and may therefore be selected against. Analogies between human language and vocal communication in animals can be misleading as a basis for understanding frequency of use, because coding efficiency is not the only factor of importance in animal communication, and the costs and benefits associated with different signal durations will vary in a species-specific manner.

Responses of golden-backed uakaris, Cacajao melanocephalus, to call playback: implications for surveys in the flooded Igapó forest.

We investigated the potential use of call playback for surveying the elusive golden-backed uakari (Cacajao melanocephalus), a diurnal social primate that typically inhabits the relatively inaccessible black-water swamp forests of the upper Amazon (Igapó forest) during the wet season. Furthermore, our objective was to understand better the functions of vocalisations of these rare and threatened monkeys. We focussed on the "tchó" call, a loud vocalisation that varies in temporal and frequency characteristics according to behavioural context and individual signaller (Bezerra et al. in Int J Primatol, 2010b). We investigated the vocal and behavioural responses of golden-backed uakaris from three Igapó areas to three different playback stimuli: own group calls (OGC); neighbouring group calls (NGC); and control (background noise). The call stimuli were used to simulate the unexpected presence of monkeys from the monkeys' own and neighbouring Igapó areas. Playback of OGC and NGC increased calling and altered behaviour in golden-backed uakaris, whereas no noticeable response occurred to the control stimuli. Furthermore, there was no evidence of habituation to the call stimuli and the natural behavioural pattern of the groups was not obviously affected. Hence, call playback seems to be a valuable tool for locating these elusive monkeys in river surveys. Most of the agonistic-related behaviour observed after NGC playback was also observed after OGC playback. As golden-backed uakaris are not territorial, the presence of strange conspecifics to the area may not necessarily represent a more threatening situation. Our methods and results may also be useful for surveys of other primate species living in the Igapó forest and in other habitat types.