Abstract
In a group of animals, interests and needs among group members can be very different. To benefit from group-living, individuals must therefore coordinate each other’s activities when they perform collective actions. Collective decision-making is a key mechanism during coordination, and it allows all members of a social group to reach a consensus. In this chapter, we first provide a mini-review about decision-making processes during collective movements across primate species. We then summarize recent developments in the study of decision-making processes in Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) at Huangshan, China, and place them in the context of the primate literature related to collective movement. These developments include the following key issues in collective movement in Tibetan macaques: leadership type, associated social factors, joining rules used, and the role of social relationships among group members in collective decision-making.
Highlights
Group-living offers many benefits related to survival and reproduction for animals (Bertram 1978; van Schaik 1983; Zemel and Lubin 1995; Krause and Ruxton 2002)
Our results showed that early joiners differed significantly in eigenvector centrality coefficient based on the half-weight index (HWI: co-occurrence index in group movements, Wang et al 2015), but there was no difference between adult males and females
We reviewed and synthesized studies of collective movement and decision-making in Tibetan macaques
Summary
Group-living offers many benefits related to survival and reproduction for animals (Bertram 1978; van Schaik 1983; Zemel and Lubin 1995; Krause and Ruxton 2002). How consensus is achieved and implemented at the behavioral level is often studied during natural group movements to and from specific resources and/or locations (e.g., sleeping and foraging sites) Such studies can provide an ecologically relevant context to probe into fundamental mechanisms of social coordination of collective actions (Boinski and Garber 2000; Fichtel et al 2011). A successful collective movement can be driven by an unshared decision-making mechanism, i.e., one individual leading all group movements and other members following it all the time (Conradt and Roper 2005) In this decision-making process, the highest-ranking male usually plays a major role in leadership in several species of Old World monkey (Sueur and Petit 2008a). We investigated decision-making processes during group movements in this group from August to December of 2012
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