Gabriele Schino

• PhD
• Research Director at Italian National Research Council

Reciprocity is probably the most debated of the evolutionary explanations for cooperation. Part of the confusion surrounding this debate stems from a failure to note that two different processes can result in reciprocity: partner control and partner choice. We suggest that the common observation that group-living animals direct their cooperative be...

To manoeuvre in complex societies, it is beneficial to acquire knowledge about the social relationships existing among group mates, so as to better predict their behaviour. Although such knowledge has been firmly established in a variety of animal taxa, how animals acquire such knowledge, as well as its functional significance, remains poorly under...

Attempts to measure dominance relationships using cardinal, rather than ordinal ranks have a long history. Nevertheless, it is still unclear if cardinal dominance ranks have an impact on the life of animals. In particular, no information is available on how individual group living animals represent their own dominance hierarchy. This can be investi...

Most research on reciprocal cooperation aims to either investigate the conditions that allow its evolution or to document actual cases of reciprocity, while the study of its proximate mechanisms is often neglected. Here, we report on an experiment aimed at testing one of the proximate mechanisms that have been proposed to underlie reciprocal cooper...

Social dilemmas play an important role in the study of cooperative behaviours. In this experiment we tested the strategies adopted by tufted capuchin monkeys, Sapajus spp., when faced with a cooperative situation involving a conflict of interest, simulating a Snowdrift game. We tested 12 capuchin monkeys (six dyads) in two experimental conditions:...

There is a vast and ever‐accumulating amount of behavioural data on individually recognised animals, an incredible resource to shed light on the ecological and evolutionary drivers of variation in animal behaviour. Yet, the full potential of such data lies in comparative research across taxa with distinct life histories and ecologies. Substantial c...

In animal social groups, the extent to which individuals consistently win agonistic interactions and their ability to monopolize resources represent two core aspects of their competitive regime. However, whether these two aspects are closely correlated within groups has rarely been studied. Here, we tested the hypothesis that hierarchy steepness, w...

Changes in the rate of self-directed behavior—a proxy for social tension—offer valuable insights into individuals' experiences of social interactions. Many studies have tested the tension-reduction hypothesis, whereby grooming is expected to reduce social tension in the grooming partners. However, it is still unclear whether responses to grooming a...

The cognitive constraint hypothesis maintains reciprocity is rare among animals because it requires cognitive capabilities that are rare, if not absent, in animals. In particular, it suggests that temporal discounting, limited memory, and limited capability of complex calculations make long‐term reciprocation essentially impossible for animals. The...

Reciprocity allows animals to balance the costs and benefits of cooperative interactions by switching roles over time. Reciprocity can be based on two different processes: a within-dyad process based on temporal relations between cooperative events (partner control) and an across-dyad process based on preferences for the most cooperative partners (...

Grooming is a common cooperative behavior whose exact costs and benefits are still to be fully elucidated. In this study, we evaluated the emotional consequences of giving and receiving grooming in mandrills ( Mandrillus sphinx ), and how these may change along time after the termination of grooming. We used scratching as a behavioral indicator of...

We observed a zoo-housed group of cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) before and after a bout of severe targeted aggression directed towards two of its members. The aggression was so severe and repeated that the zoo personnel was forced to remove the two victims and the main aggressor. In the tense period that preceded removal, the tamarins show...

We studied social relationships in a captive group of female Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus). Female tahr showed frequent aggression and a strictly linear age‐graded dominance hierarchy. Coalitions, in contrast, were rare. Female tahr formed differentiated social relationships, as they interacted with different individuals at widely differen...

Communicative complexity relates to social complexity, as individuals in more complex social systems either use more signals or more complex signals than individuals living in less complex ones. Taking the individual group member's perspective, here we examine communicative complexity in relation to social complexity, which arises from two componen...

Self-directed behavior, such as self-scratching (hereafter, scratching), occurs in several taxa across the animal kingdom, including nonhuman primates. There is substantial evidence that scratching is an indicator of anxiety-like emotions in a variety of nonhuman primate species. Despite its importance as a window into emotional states, few studies...

Recent findings have shown that the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in human massage and caress are similar to those involved in grooming of nonhuman primates. In contrast, little is known about the neurophysiological mechanisms of brief touch in both human and other primates. Here we review evidence for brief touch in nonhuman primates and...

Although cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) are cooperative breeders and generally display low levels of aggression and high levels of cooperation, severe injurious aggression can occur in captive groups, leading to the eviction of the victims (dispersal in the wild). This phenomenon has not yet been fully understood despite its important impli...

We addressed two different aspects of indirect reciprocity in tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) studying two common cooperative behaviours, grooming and food sharing. In an observational study, we tested whether capuchin monkeys were more likely to groom an individual that had just groomed a group mate than an individual that had not groomed a...

Grooming directed to different body areas is likely to imply different costs and benefits for groomers and groomees. In this study, we investigated social influences on grooming topography in captive female mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx). Subordinate groomers preferred to direct grooming to "safe" areas (the back and rump) compared to dominant groom...

Primates are known to have considerable knowledge about the social relationships that link their group mates and are likely to derive this information from observing the social interactions that occur in their social group. They may, therefore, be hypothesized to pay particular attention to the social interactions involving group mates. In this stu...

The dot probe task is an experimental procedure commonly used to study how animals (including humans) pay attention to different stimuli. In this study, we evaluated how different durations of image exposure modulate the response to this task and how male and female tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) respond to a dot probe presented immediately...

Primates are known to have considerable knowledge about the social relationships that link their group mates, and are likely to derive this information from observing the social interactions that occur in their social group. They may therefore be hypothesized to pay particular attention to the social interactions involving group mates. In this stud...

Nepotism and reciprocity are not mutually exclusive explanations for cooperation, because helping decisions can depend on both kinship cues and past reciprocal help. The importance of these two factors can therefore be difficult to disentangle using observational data. We developed a resampling procedure for inferring the statistical power to detec...

We argue that the study of social complexity can follow two different approaches, based on how it is seen from the outside or on how it is experienced from within. Recent focus has been on the former with social complexity emerging from the interactions of group members. Here, we take the view from within and deal with the social complexity that in...

The study of the emotional and cognitive consequences of social interactions plays a critical role in the understanding of the dynamics of social relationships and reciprocity. In this study, we developed an attention bias test for tufted capuchin monkeys, Sapajus sp., that required no training, and applied it to evaluate the consequences of receiv...

Nepotism and reciprocity are not mutually exclusive explanations for cooperation; helping decisions can depend on both kinship cues and past reciprocal help. The importance of these two factors can therefore be difficult to disentangle with observational data. We developed a resampling procedure for inferring the statistical power to detect observa...

Grooming is the most common primate affiliative behaviour, and primates compete for accessing grooming partners. We studied a captive group of mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) to evaluate the role of different types of competitive interactions in shaping the distribution of grooming among females. Mandrill females preferentially groomed high‐ranking i...

The effects of aging on the social behavior of nonhuman primates is little understood, especially in New World monkeys. We studied the members of a colony of tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus sp.) in order to evaluate age related changes in their social behavior. We conducted observations on 25 subjects aged 4–36 years, living in captive social grou...

Among nonhuman primates, the evolutionary underpinnings of variation in social structure remain debated, with both ancestral relationships and adaptation to current conditions hypothesized to play determining roles. Here we assess whether interspecific variation in higher-order aspects of female macaque (genus: Macaca) dominance and grooming social...

An ability to deceive conspecifics is thought to have favoured the evolution of large brains in social animals, but evidence that such behaviours require cognitive complexity is lacking. Tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) have been documented to use false alarm calls during feeding in a manner that functions to deceive competitors. However, com...

ESM provide information about supplementary methods and results, along with tables from the statistical analyses described in the main manuscript.

Primates possess impressive cognitive abilities, especially in the social domain, and accumulate knowledge about their social environment. Studying how primates distribute their attention among group mates may help us understand how they obtain their social knowledge and what they consider as the most relevant social stimuli. We conducted 11 month...

It has been suggested that dogs’ ability to comprehend human pointing gestures evolved as a by-product of the socio-emotional changes associated with domestication. Given the large role played by the oxytocin system in socio-emotional processes, it is possible to hypothesize a role for oxytocin in modulating dogs’ socio-communicative skills. Indeed...

Studying the emotional consequences of social behaviour in nonverbal animals require methods to access their emotional state. One such method is provided by cognitive bias tests. We applied a judgement bias test to tufted capuchin monkeys, Sapajus sp., to evaluate (1) whether receiving grooming was associated with a short-term increase in ‘optimism...

Cashew nuts are very nutritious but so well defended by caustic chemicals that very few species eat them. We investigated how wild bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) living at Fazenda Boa Vista (FBV; Piauí, Brazil) process cashew nuts (Anacardium spp.) to avoid the caustic chemicals contained in the seed mesocarp. We recorded the behavi...

While the evolution of reciprocal cooperation has attracted an enormous attention, the proximate mechanisms underlying the ability of animals to cooperate reciprocally are comparatively neglected. Symmetry-based reciprocity is a hypothetical proximate mechanism that has been suggested to be widespread among cognitively unsophisticated animals. Met...

Introduzione. Le attività di spostamento sono movimenti diretti verso il proprio corpo, generalmente espressi in situazioni di conflitto motivazionale. In psicologia evolutiva c’è generale accordo nel considerare la capacità di regolazione in compiti che non prevedono supervisione dell’adulto come indicatore di interiorizzazione delle regole genito...

This study investigated the short-term consequences of giving grooming in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) in order to obtain information on its immediate costs and benefits. Giving grooming was associated with increased aggression received from groomees and decreased aggression received from third parties (but only as long as the groomer maintai...

In group-living animals, aggression can have consequences that spread beyond the initial opponents. In this study, we observed a social group of mandrills, Mandrillus sphinx, focusing on the behaviour of uninvolved bystanders, i.e. those individuals that witnessed aggression without being directly involved. In the aftermath of aggression, uninvolve...

In this study, we investigated the reciprocal exchanges of grooming, tolerance and reduced aggression in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), a cooperatively breeding primate whose groups are typically characterized by uniformly high genetic relatedness and high interdependency between group members. Both partner control and partner choice proces...

presented at the 6°congress of the European Federation for Primatology, Rome, August 2015

In this study, we assessed whether retaliatory aggression is used by mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) victims as a way to enforce a reduction in further received aggression. Four possible types of retaliatory aggression were explored: direct or indirect and immediate or time-decoupled retal-iation. Both immediate direct retaliation (counteraggression)...

Le emozioni giocano un ruolo fondamentale nel processo decisionale. Non solo i processi cognitivi, ma anche quelli affettivi, influenzano il modo di valutare gli eventi e di prendere decisioni. Per studiare il modo in cui emozioni e processi cognitivi interagiscono, la ricerca, soprattutto in campo etologico e neurologico, ha indagato il ruolo svol...

Emotional responses to social interactions and the associated behavioural measures (e.g., self‐directed behaviours, SDBs) have been little studied in New World monkeys, especially in wild settings. In this study, we investigated the factors affecting anxiety in a wild group of tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella nigritus) using self‐scratching (h...

Meta-analytical techniques are increasingly used in behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology. Here we review the studies that have used meta-analysis to address debated issues in animal social behaviour. This literature can be grouped into six research themes: socio-ecology, communication, cooperation, dominance, sexual behaviour, and parental...

Although most primates live in groups, experiments on reciprocity usually test individuals in dyads. This could hide the processes emerging in richer social settings, reducing the ecological validity of the results. We run an experiment on reciprocal food transfers testing capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in triads, so that subjects could choose to...

Affiliative interactions exchanged between victims of aggression and individuals not involved in the original aggression (bystanders) have been observed in various species. Three hypothetical functions have been proposed for these interactions: consolation, self-protection and substitute reconciliation, but data to test them are scanty. We conducte...

Emotions play a critical role in decision-making. Displacement activities are behavioral patterns that occur in frustrating situations, but it is unclear whether they are a functionless byproduct of motivational conflict or whether they function to limit the costs associated to the internal conflict. We tested 151 preschool children in a delay main...

Reciprocation is thought to favour altruism among nonrelatives. Three types of reciprocity have been proposed: direct, indirect and generalized. All three are theoretically possible, but their role in real biological systems is unclear. We concurrently examined the occurrence of direct, indirect and generalized reciprocity during grooming exchanges...

Seyfarth's model assumes that female primates derive rank-related benefits from higher-ranking females in exchange for grooming. As a consequence, the model predicts females prefer high-ranking females as grooming partners and compete for the opportunity to groom them. Therefore, allogrooming is expected to be directed up the dominance hierarchy an...

Dominance hierarchies are thought to provide various fitness-related benefits to dominant individuals (e.g., preferential access to food or mating partners). Remarkably, however, different studies on this topic have produced contradictory results, with some showing strong positive association between rank and fitness (i.e., dominants gain benefits...

Nonhuman primates show remarkable variation in several aspects of social structure. One way to characterize this variation in the genus Macaca is through the concept of social style, which is based on the observation that several social traits appear to covary with one another in a linear or at least continuous manner. In practice, macaques are mor...

Phylogenetic models of primate social behaviour posit that core social traits are inherent species characteristics that depend largely on phylogenetic histories of species rather than on adaptation to current socioecological conditions. These models predict that aspects of social structure will vary more between species than within species and that...

Between-group competition has long been thought to be a key factor influencing within-group social dynamics. In humans, it has been suggested that between-group competition may favour the emergence of within-group cooperation. However, between-group competition can also be hypothesized to induce social tension and cause within-group social relation...

The case of the Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus) is a rather interesting one for several reasons. For one, it is the only species of the genus Macaca that is found outside Asia. Its ancient lineage and present fragmented distribution in Africa, so strikingly afar from the other macaque species, place it central to all discussions on macaque phylog...

Urine washing is a common behavior in strepsirrhine and platyrrhine primates, but its function is still poorly understood. We investigated the factors influencing urine washing behavior in 2 captive groups of tufted capuchins (Cebus apella). Urine washing was affected by group membership (subjects in the 2 groups urine washed at different rates) an...

Primates are notable for the widespread presence of long-term female-male associations which go beyond the mating context. However, little attention has been given to the factors that affect within-species variation in female-male relationships, especially among New World primates. Although detailed accounts of heterosexual relationships in Cebus s...

Although variations in the rate of reconciliation have been the subject of extensive studies, variations in conciliatory patterns and their differential use have barely been investigated. In this study, we analysed the postconflict behaviour of a captive group of mandrills, Mandrillus sphinx, and observed a differential use of contact and noncontac...

The strategies used by individuals to deploy altruistic behaviors have long captured research attention. Two general mechanisms can account for the decision-making process underpinning the deployment of altruistic behaviors among nonkin. The first mechanism, referred to here as "temporal relation between events," corresponds to classical reciprocal...

It is often (implicitly) assumed that the expectation of reciprocation motivates animal altruism, and thus that animals “plan” their social interactions. We tested this hypothesis by studying a captive group of mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx). In our focal group, the alpha male was more likely to provide agonistic support in the minutes after the rec...

In this study we aimed at producing maps of real vegetation and of grass biomass of the Sibillini National Park (Central Italy) on the basis of multispectral satellite images and ground surveys. We idenfited and mapped 17 vegetation associations. Overall accuracy of the vegetation map was over 80%. We also produced maps of grass biomass that showed...

Current discussion about reciprocal altruism is plagued by a few points of continuing disagreement/misunderstanding. In order to facilitate progress in understanding the role of reciprocity in animal societies, in this paper we try to highlight these points of disagreement/misunderstanding. Our contribution can be summarized by the following statem...

Despite their importance for group-living animals, mechanisms that prevent aggressive escalation have seldom been investigated. Conflict prevention might imply the ability to foresee future needs and the question whether animals have this capacity is still open to debate. A few studies have suggested that animals may be able to use anticipatory str...

Humans can engage in relatively indiscriminate altruistic behaviors such as donating money to charities, giving blood, and volunteering to review scientific papers. They also live in societies characterized by examples of cooperation of unmatched complexity, such as organized armies, the cooperative building of infrastructures such as roads and rai...

Newborn infants can affect female social dynamics, and provide ideal conditions to test the biological market theory and its assumptions. In infant markets, infants are the desired commodity, mothers control access to them, and other females (potential handlers) trade grooming for infant handling. The supply/demand ratio corresponds to the number o...

Cords and Aureli (2000) proposed that relationship quality can be described by three components, i.e., value, security, and compatibility, based on the benefits social partners receive from their relationship and on how likely it is for them to maintain a stable friendly relationship over time. We aimed to examine whether this 3-components structur...

In this study, we examined the time frame of reciprocal partner choice in the grooming interactions of captive mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) in order to test the hypothesis that the cognitive limitations of primates constrain the occurrence of reciprocation to short time intervals. In contrast to this hypothesis, mandrills groomed preferentially th...

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the evolution of altruistic behaviours. Their relative roles in explaining actual cases of animal altruism are, however, unclear. In particular, while kin selection is widely believed to have a pervasive influence on animal behaviour, reciprocity is generally thought to be rare. Despite this general...

Studies investigating the relation between allogrooming and social rank in capuchin monkeys (genus Cebus) have yielded inconsistent results. In this study, we investigated the relation between grooming, agonistic support, aggression and social rank in a captive group of tufted capuchin monkeys (C. apella). Differently from most previous studies, we...

This paper reviews recent work on reciprocal altruism in primates with the aim of highlighting the roles that reciprocal partner choice may have had in the evolution of primate altruism, and that emotions may play in supporting primates' ability to exert such reciprocal partner choice. Individual studies and meta‐analyses show that primates recipro...

Socio-ecological models predict group size to be one major factor affecting the level of food competition. The aims of this study were to analyse how grooming distribution and reconciliation were affected by differences in group size and food competition in a habitat where predation risk is absent. Data were collected on two groups of different siz...

The purpose of this work is to investigate the possible use of MODIS and ENVISAT-ASAR Data to extract soil moisture (SM) field and validate the developed systems by means of in situ measurements. The main idea of this study concerns the advantages that could arise from a continuous and almost real time SM monitoring, permitted by wide-swath passive...

Recent theoretical and experimental studies argued that reciprocity is constrained by the cognitive limitations of most animals and that, when reciprocation occurs, it should necessarily be short term. In this study, we examined the time frame of partner choice in the reciprocal grooming of captive female tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Fem...

Primates may trade altruistic behaviours, such as grooming, either for itself or for different rank-related benefits, such as tolerance or agonistic support. Ecological conditions are expected to affect competition and thus the steepness of dominance hierarchies. This, in turn, may influence the value of the different currencies that primates excha...

A novel approach to studying social relationships in captive adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) was taken by using principal components analysis (PCA) to extract three key components of relationship quality from nine behavioural variables. Based on the loadings of the behavioural variables, the components appeared to match previously hypothesized...

Socioecological models aim to predict the effect of environmental variables on species’ ecology and social behaviour. Larger groups should face more within-group food competition than smaller groups but benefit from a reduction in predation pressure and/or between-group food competition. The balance between benefits and costs of living in larger gr...

Agonistic support is generally considered a classical example of altruistic behaviour. It plays a critical role in the process of rank acquisition. This study investigates agonistic coalitions involving juvenile Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) living in a large captive group. Kinship was a good predictor of agonistic support received by juvenile...

The theory of reciprocal altruism offers an explanation for the evolution of altruistic behaviours among unrelated animals. Among primates, grooming is one of the most common altruistic behaviours. Primates have been suggested to exchange grooming both for itself and for rank-related benefits. While previous meta-analyses have shown that they direc...