SEMINAR: Growing up in a flexible family: Behavioural development and family social dynamics in captive gibbons and siamang

Seminar is scheduled for Monday 29 Feb at 4pm

The Seminar: The gibbons and siamangs (family Hylobatidae) are renowned for their unusual social organisation (social monogamy) and were once thought to be inflexible in their social behaviour; however, hylobatids share many characteristics with their cousins (the great apes) that increase the benefits of, and capacity for, social flexibility. Detailed observation of intra-group social behaviour is difficult in wild groups. Captive family groups provide a valuable resource for investigating variation in social behaviour. This study explored adult pair behaviour, parental roles, immature development and patterns of aggression and affiliation within captive gibbon families in differing contexts. The flexible social behaviour displayed by these captive individuals indicated that cooperation may be an important driver of social behaviour in hylobatids, as in other family-living species. In combination with other sociodemographic characteristics (e.g. production of overlapping offspring and delayed dispersal), flexible, coordinated social roles may allow hylobatids to pool individual efforts in territorial defence and parental care across a small, highly related social group. In this way, the social behaviour and life history of these small apes bears a remarkable resemblance to that of humans, and some family-living birds.

The Speaker: Belinda Burns submitted her PhD thesis in June 2015 entitled ‘Growing up in a flexible family: Behavioural development and family social dynamics in captive gibbons and siamangs (Primates: Hylobatidae)’. Her project was supervised by Assoc/Prof Debra Judge and E/Prof Charles Oxnard in the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology.