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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...

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Autores principales: Wilson, Bart J., Brosnan, Sarah F., Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V., Sanz, Crickette M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
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.
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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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