Multimodal communication in primates – a socio-ecological perspective

• Applicant: Dr. Federica Amici
• Subject Area: Sensory and Behavioural Biology ; Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568805339

In the quest to understand what makes us human, researchers have often emphasized the uniqueness of human language compared to the communication systems of other species. However, a complex multimodal system like language likely builds upon traits shared with other taxa. Cross-species comparisons, therefore, serve as a powerful tool to identify the precursors of human language, test hypotheses about the socio-ecological pressures driving its emergence, and shed light on the evolutionary origins of multimodal communication. In this project, I will adopt a multimodal perspective and establish a new, coherent methodological framework for studying primate communication, based on novel bottom-up approaches and the systematic integration of socio-ecological perspectives. By doing so, I aim to set new methodological standards for the study of multimodal communication in animals, enabling me to (1) provide a first comprehensive and holistic perspective on primate multimodal communication, (2) identify its key properties, (3) determine its immediate functions, and (4) uncover its socio-ecological drivers, to infer the evolutionary conditions that favoured the emergence of multimodal communication in humans. The results will offer a means to test theories of language evolution and provide fundamental new insights into the evolutionary origins of multimodal communication. I will use primates as a model due to their close phylogenetic distance to humans and their reliance on multimodal communication systems similar to the human one, which include vocalizations, gestures and facial expressions. My study will focus on the moor macaque (Macaca maura), a species that has high social tolerance levels and is thus expected to show complex communication skills. To ensure ecological validity and better capture the natural socio-ecological variation in which communication unfolds, I will conduct my research in the wild. By applying newly developed methods, I will empirically test fine-grained predictions about the properties, functions, and drivers of multimodal communication. This approach will overcome current methodological limitations and provide a comprehensive, bottom-up approach for studying communication in non-human species. Overall, this project will generate a substantial amount of high-quality data to understand how macaques use multimodal combinations of vocalizations, gestures and facial expressions. This will enable me to reliably identify the properties and functions of primate multimodal communication, uncover its socio-ecological drivers, and ultimately infer the evolutionary conditions that favored the emergence of complex communication systems.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2392: Visual communication. Theoretical, empirical, and applied perspectives (ViCom)
• International Connection: Indonesia
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Risma Illa Maulany; Professor Putu Oka Ngakan