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Consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies
Practical and ethical constraints limit our ability to experimentally test socioecological theory in wild primates. We took an alternate approach to model this, allowing groups of humans to interact in a virtual world in which they had to find food and interact with both ingroup and outgroup avatars...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7442632/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32826938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70955-6 |
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author | Wilson, Bart J. Brosnan, Sarah F. Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V. Sanz, Crickette M. |
author_facet | Wilson, Bart J. Brosnan, Sarah F. Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V. Sanz, Crickette M. |
author_sort | Wilson, Bart J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Practical and ethical constraints limit our ability to experimentally test socioecological theory in wild primates. We took an alternate approach to model this, allowing groups of humans to interact in a virtual world in which they had to find food and interact with both ingroup and outgroup avatars to earn rewards. We altered ratios and distributions of high- and low-value foods to test the hypothesis that hominoids vary with regards to social cohesion and intergroup tolerance due to their feeding ecology. We found larger nesting clusters and decreased attacks on outgroup competitors in the Bonobo condition versus the Chimpanzee condition, suggesting a significant effect of feeding competition alone on social structure. We also demonstrate that virtual worlds are a robust mechanism for testing hypotheses that are impossible to study in the wild. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7442632 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-74426322020-08-26 Consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies Wilson, Bart J. Brosnan, Sarah F. Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V. Sanz, Crickette M. Sci Rep Article Practical and ethical constraints limit our ability to experimentally test socioecological theory in wild primates. We took an alternate approach to model this, allowing groups of humans to interact in a virtual world in which they had to find food and interact with both ingroup and outgroup avatars to earn rewards. We altered ratios and distributions of high- and low-value foods to test the hypothesis that hominoids vary with regards to social cohesion and intergroup tolerance due to their feeding ecology. We found larger nesting clusters and decreased attacks on outgroup competitors in the Bonobo condition versus the Chimpanzee condition, suggesting a significant effect of feeding competition alone on social structure. We also demonstrate that virtual worlds are a robust mechanism for testing hypotheses that are impossible to study in the wild. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-08-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7442632/ /pubmed/32826938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70955-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Wilson, Bart J. Brosnan, Sarah F. Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V. Sanz, Crickette M. Consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies |
title | Consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies |
title_full | Consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies |
title_fullStr | Consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies |
title_full_unstemmed | Consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies |
title_short | Consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies |
title_sort | consistent differences in a virtual world model of ape societies |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7442632/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32826938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70955-6 |
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