Overview
I am a behavioural ecologist studying the evolution of social relationships. Animals in a wide variety of species form a few close bonds, akin to friendships, with some of their group members. With my research, I aim to understand how forming social bonds impacts individual survival and reproduction, and what drives partner choice in the formation of these bonds.
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher with Lauren Brent at the Center for Research in Animal Behaviour (CRAB) of the University of Exeter (UK). I am part of FriendOrigins, an ERC Consolidator funded project (864461), aimed at understanding the evolutionary origins of friendship. I take a cross-species comparative approach to test how socio-ecological factors shape social relationships. Together with Julie Duboscq, Christof Neumann, Julia Ostner and Oliver Schülke, we are building a collaborative dataset with decades of data on over ten species of macaques. Studying social relationships in these species, with varying social systems and ecological pressures and known phylogenetic relationships, we can explicitly address the question of which types of social connectedness are adaptive, and why.
Qualifications
2016-2020: PhD in Behavioral Ecology, University of Göttingen
2014-2015: Master of Sciene, Biology, Ghent University & Utrecht University
2010-2013: Bachelor of Science, Biology, Ghent University
Links
Research group links
Research
Research interests
Social bonds, or friendships, allow individuals to live healthier, longer lives, yet the reason why these relationships are beneficial remains unclear. To better understand the evolutionary origin of social relationships, and to uncover the mechanisms linking sociality to fitness benefits, I take a cross-species comparative approach across all well-studied macaque species. Macaques show the same basic patterns of social organisation, but display broad interspecific variation in their social style. By studying these differences in sociality using social network analysis, and linking them to socio-ecological factors such as intra-group relatedness and competition, we can test which type(s) of social connectedness are adaptive, and why.
This project is part of the FriendOrigins project (ERC funded, 864461), and uses the collaborative dataset MacaqueNet, built and maintained by me, Lauren Brent, Julie Duboscq, Christof Neumann, Julia Ostner and Oliver Schülke.
Research projects
Social bonds, or friendships, allow individuals to live healthier, longer lives, yet the reason why these relationships are beneficial remains unclear. To better understand the evolutionary origin of social relationships, and to uncover the mechanisms linking sociality to fitness benefits, I take a cross-species comparative approach across all well-studied macaque species. Macaques show the same basic patterns of social organisation, but display broad interspecific variation in their social style. By studying these differences in sociality using social network analysis, and linking them to socio-ecological factors such as intra-group relatedness and competition, we can test which type(s) of social connectedness are adaptive, and why.
This project is part of the FriendOrigins project (ERC funded, 864461), and uses the collaborative dataset MacaqueNet, built and maintained by me, Lauren Brent, Julie Duboscq, Christof Neumann, Julia Ostner and Oliver Schülke.
Publications
Key publications | Publications by category | Publications by year
Publications by category
Journal articles
Schülke O, Anzà S, Crockford C, De Moor D, Deschner T, Fichtel C, Gogarten JF, Kappeler PM, Manin V, Müller-Klein N, et al (2022). Quantifying within-group variation in sociality—covariation among metrics and patterns across primate groups and species.
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology,
76(4).
Abstract:
Quantifying within-group variation in sociality—covariation among metrics and patterns across primate groups and species
. Abstract
. It has long been recognized that the patterning of social interactions within a group can give rise to a social structure that holds very different places for different individuals. Such within-group variation in sociality correlates with fitness proxies in fish, birds, and mammals. Broader integration of this research has been hampered by the lack of agreement on how to integrate information from a plethora of dyadic interactions into individual-level metrics. As a step towards standardization, we collected comparative data on affinitive and affiliative interactions from multiple groups each of five species of primates to assess whether the same aspects of sociality are measured by different metrics and indices. We calculated 16 different sociality metrics used in previous research and thought to represent three different sociality concepts. We assessed covariation of metrics within groups and then summarized covariation patterns across all 15 study groups, which varied in size from 5 to 41 adults. With some methodological and conceptual caveats, we found that the number of weak ties individuals formed within their groups represented a dimension of sociality that was largely independent from the overall number of ties as well as from the number and strength of the strong ties they formed. Metrics quantifying indirect connectedness exhibited strong covariation with strong tie metrics and thus failed to capture a third aspect of sociality. Future research linking affiliation and affinity to fitness or other individual level outcomes should quantify inter-individual variation in three aspects: the overall number of ties, the number of weak ties, and the number or strength of strong ties individuals form, after taking into account effects of social network density.
.
. Significance statement
. In recent years, long-term studies of individually known animals have revealed strong correlations between individual social bonds and social integration, on the one hand, and reproductive success and survival on the other hand, suggesting strong natural selection on affiliative and affinitive behavior within groups. It proved difficult to generalize from these studies because they all measured sociality in slightly different ways. Analyzing covariation between 16 previously used metrics identified only three rather independent dimensions of variation. Thus, different studies have tapped into the same biological phenomenon. How individuals are weakly connected within their group needs further attention.
.
Abstract.
Barrault C, Soldati A, Hobaiter C, Mugisha S, De Moor D, Zuberbühler K, Dezecache G (2022). Thermal imaging reveals social monitoring during social feeding in wild chimpanzees.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci,
377(1860).
Abstract:
Thermal imaging reveals social monitoring during social feeding in wild chimpanzees.
Understanding the affective lives of animals has been a long-standing challenge in science. Recent technological progress in infrared thermal imaging has enabled researchers to monitor animals' physiological states in real-time when exposed to ecologically relevant situations, such as feeding in the company of others. During social feeding, an individual's physiological states are likely to vary with the nature of the resource and perceptions of competition. Previous findings in chimpanzees have indicated that events perceived as competitive cause decreases in nasal temperatures, whereas the opposite was observed for cooperative interactions. Here, we tested how food resources and audience structure impacted on how social feeding events were perceived by wild chimpanzees. Overall, we found that nasal temperatures were lower when meat was consumed as compared to figs, consistent with the idea that social feeding on more contested resources is perceived as more dangerous and stressful. Nasal temperatures were significant affected by interactions between food type and audience composition, in particular the number of males, their dominance status, and their social bond status relative to the subject, while no effects for the presence of females were observed. Our findings suggest that male chimpanzees closely monitor and assess their social environment during competitive situations, and that infrared imaging provides an important complement to access psychological processes beyond observable social behaviours. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cognition, communication and social bonds in primates'.
Abstract.
Author URL.
De Moor D, Roos C, Ostner J, Schülke O (2020). Bonds of bros and brothers: Kinship and social bonding in postdispersal male macaques. Molecular Ecology, 29(17), 3346-3360.
De Moor D, Roos C, Ostner J, Schülke O (2020). Female Assamese macaques bias their affiliation to paternal and maternal kin.
Behavioral Ecology,
31(2), 493-507.
Abstract:
Female Assamese macaques bias their affiliation to paternal and maternal kin
Abstract
. Forming strong social bonds can lead to higher reproductive success, increased longevity, and/or increased infant survival in several mammal species. Given these adaptive benefits, understanding what determines partner preferences in social bonding is important. Maternal relatedness strongly predicts partner preference across many mammalian taxa. The role of paternal relatedness, however, has received relatively little attention, even though paternal and maternal kin share the same number of genes, and theoretically similar preferences would therefore be expected for paternal kin. Here, we investigate the role of maternal and paternal relatedness in female affiliation in Assamese macaques (Macaca assamensis), a species characterized by a relatively low male reproductive skew. We studied a wild population under natural conditions using extensive behavioral data and relatedness analyses based on pedigree reconstruction. We found stronger affiliative relationships and more time spent grooming between maternal kin and paternal half-sisters compared with nonkin, with no preference of maternal over paternal kin. Paternally related and nonrelated dyads did not form stronger relationships when they had less close maternal kin available, but we would need a bigger sample size to confirm this. As expected given the low reproductive skew, affiliative relationships between paternal half-sisters closer in age were not stronger than between paternal half-sisters with larger age differences, suggesting that the kin bias toward paternal kin was not mediated by age similarity. An alternative way through which paternal kin could get familiarized is mother- and/or father-mediated familiarity.
Abstract.
Publications by year
2022
Schülke O, Anzà S, Crockford C, De Moor D, Deschner T, Fichtel C, Gogarten JF, Kappeler PM, Manin V, Müller-Klein N, et al (2022). Quantifying within-group variation in sociality—covariation among metrics and patterns across primate groups and species.
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology,
76(4).
Abstract:
Quantifying within-group variation in sociality—covariation among metrics and patterns across primate groups and species
. Abstract
. It has long been recognized that the patterning of social interactions within a group can give rise to a social structure that holds very different places for different individuals. Such within-group variation in sociality correlates with fitness proxies in fish, birds, and mammals. Broader integration of this research has been hampered by the lack of agreement on how to integrate information from a plethora of dyadic interactions into individual-level metrics. As a step towards standardization, we collected comparative data on affinitive and affiliative interactions from multiple groups each of five species of primates to assess whether the same aspects of sociality are measured by different metrics and indices. We calculated 16 different sociality metrics used in previous research and thought to represent three different sociality concepts. We assessed covariation of metrics within groups and then summarized covariation patterns across all 15 study groups, which varied in size from 5 to 41 adults. With some methodological and conceptual caveats, we found that the number of weak ties individuals formed within their groups represented a dimension of sociality that was largely independent from the overall number of ties as well as from the number and strength of the strong ties they formed. Metrics quantifying indirect connectedness exhibited strong covariation with strong tie metrics and thus failed to capture a third aspect of sociality. Future research linking affiliation and affinity to fitness or other individual level outcomes should quantify inter-individual variation in three aspects: the overall number of ties, the number of weak ties, and the number or strength of strong ties individuals form, after taking into account effects of social network density.
.
. Significance statement
. In recent years, long-term studies of individually known animals have revealed strong correlations between individual social bonds and social integration, on the one hand, and reproductive success and survival on the other hand, suggesting strong natural selection on affiliative and affinitive behavior within groups. It proved difficult to generalize from these studies because they all measured sociality in slightly different ways. Analyzing covariation between 16 previously used metrics identified only three rather independent dimensions of variation. Thus, different studies have tapped into the same biological phenomenon. How individuals are weakly connected within their group needs further attention.
.
Abstract.
Barrault C, Soldati A, Hobaiter C, Mugisha S, De Moor D, Zuberbühler K, Dezecache G (2022). Thermal imaging reveals social monitoring during social feeding in wild chimpanzees.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci,
377(1860).
Abstract:
Thermal imaging reveals social monitoring during social feeding in wild chimpanzees.
Understanding the affective lives of animals has been a long-standing challenge in science. Recent technological progress in infrared thermal imaging has enabled researchers to monitor animals' physiological states in real-time when exposed to ecologically relevant situations, such as feeding in the company of others. During social feeding, an individual's physiological states are likely to vary with the nature of the resource and perceptions of competition. Previous findings in chimpanzees have indicated that events perceived as competitive cause decreases in nasal temperatures, whereas the opposite was observed for cooperative interactions. Here, we tested how food resources and audience structure impacted on how social feeding events were perceived by wild chimpanzees. Overall, we found that nasal temperatures were lower when meat was consumed as compared to figs, consistent with the idea that social feeding on more contested resources is perceived as more dangerous and stressful. Nasal temperatures were significant affected by interactions between food type and audience composition, in particular the number of males, their dominance status, and their social bond status relative to the subject, while no effects for the presence of females were observed. Our findings suggest that male chimpanzees closely monitor and assess their social environment during competitive situations, and that infrared imaging provides an important complement to access psychological processes beyond observable social behaviours. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cognition, communication and social bonds in primates'.
Abstract.
Author URL.
2020
De Moor D, Roos C, Ostner J, Schülke O (2020). Bonds of bros and brothers: Kinship and social bonding in postdispersal male macaques. Molecular Ecology, 29(17), 3346-3360.
De Moor D, Roos C, Ostner J, Schülke O (2020). Female Assamese macaques bias their affiliation to paternal and maternal kin.
Behavioral Ecology,
31(2), 493-507.
Abstract:
Female Assamese macaques bias their affiliation to paternal and maternal kin
Abstract
. Forming strong social bonds can lead to higher reproductive success, increased longevity, and/or increased infant survival in several mammal species. Given these adaptive benefits, understanding what determines partner preferences in social bonding is important. Maternal relatedness strongly predicts partner preference across many mammalian taxa. The role of paternal relatedness, however, has received relatively little attention, even though paternal and maternal kin share the same number of genes, and theoretically similar preferences would therefore be expected for paternal kin. Here, we investigate the role of maternal and paternal relatedness in female affiliation in Assamese macaques (Macaca assamensis), a species characterized by a relatively low male reproductive skew. We studied a wild population under natural conditions using extensive behavioral data and relatedness analyses based on pedigree reconstruction. We found stronger affiliative relationships and more time spent grooming between maternal kin and paternal half-sisters compared with nonkin, with no preference of maternal over paternal kin. Paternally related and nonrelated dyads did not form stronger relationships when they had less close maternal kin available, but we would need a bigger sample size to confirm this. As expected given the low reproductive skew, affiliative relationships between paternal half-sisters closer in age were not stronger than between paternal half-sisters with larger age differences, suggesting that the kin bias toward paternal kin was not mediated by age similarity. An alternative way through which paternal kin could get familiarized is mother- and/or father-mediated familiarity.
Abstract.
2019
Berger I, Hobaiter C, Bell M, De Moor D, Gruber T (2019). Ecological and dietary differences between Ugandan chimpanzee communities with possible implications on tool use.
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