Let's Talk Monkey- Quantitative Analysis of Marmoset Monkey Calls
Description
The marmoset monkey (Callithrix jacchus) is a new-world primate species native to South America rainforests. Because they rely on vocal communication to navigate and survive, marmosets have evolved as a promising primate model to study vocal production, perception, cognition, and social interactions. The purpose of this project is to provide an initial assessment on the vocal repertoire of a marmoset colony raised at Arizona State University and call types they use in different social conditions. The vocal production of a colony of 16 marmoset monkeys was recorded in 3 different conditions with three repeats of each condition. The positive condition involves a caretaker distributing food, the negative condition involves an experimenter taking a marmoset out of his cage to a different room, and the control condition is the normal state of the colony with no human interference. A total of 5396 samples of calls were collected during a total of 256 minutes of audio recordings. Call types were analyzed in semi-automated computer programs developed in the Laboratory of Auditory Computation and Neurophysiology. A total of 5 major call types were identified and their variants in different social conditions were analyzed. The results showed that the total number of calls and the type of calls made differed in the three social conditions, suggesting that monkey vocalization signals and depends on the social context.
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2019-05
Agent
- Author (aut): Fernandez, Jessmin Natalie
- Thesis director: Zhou, Yi
- Committee member: Berisha, Visar
- Contributor (ctb): School of International Letters and Cultures
- Contributor (ctb): Department of Psychology
- Contributor (ctb): School of Life Sciences
- Contributor (ctb): Barrett, The Honors College