Editorial: Cognition, foraging, and energetics in extant and extinct primates
Résumé
Within the framework of optimal foraging theory (Stephens and Krebs, 1986; Pyke, 2019), primates living in complex and fluctuating environments are likely to mobilize cognitive skills—such as episodic or long-term memory, planning and value-based decision-making—that allow them to exhibit more efficient foraging decisions and strategies (Janson, 2019; Trapanese et al., 2019; Garcia et al., 2021). These strategies toward optimizing energetic balance (i.e., maximizing benefits while minimizing costs and risks associated with the exploitation of resources in the environment) are suggested to vary at the interspecific level but also to be constrained—or indeed enhanced—by the social context. Nevertheless, there is still much we do not know about the cognition supporting foraging behavior in primates, and a collective and concerted effort toward filling the gaps was needed. This Research Topic has brought together researchers from diverse disciplines including animal cognition, behavioral ecology, paleoanthropology, archeology, and ethnoecology. It aimed to illustrate our current understanding of the diversity in primate foraging strategies and associated cognitive abilities in different socio-ecological contexts, both past and present. The issue is composed of contributions on modern primates (including humans) as well as extinct hominins, from laboratory settings and from fieldwork, and taking empirical, theoretical, or conceptual approaches to provide a more complete understanding of foraging cognition across the primate order. Overall, these studies highlight the extraordinary variation existing in several key cognitive processes mobilized for foraging, and point to socio-ecological factors that drive the evolution of foraging decisions at the individual and collective levels. Foraging behaviors draw on cognitive skills to make complex decisions (e.g., in modulating navigation strategies or travel paths for exploiting sparse or ephemeral resources: Janmaat et al., 2014; Green et al., 2020) contingent on ecological challenges but also on long-lasting social interactions with competing or cooperating conspecifics (see Garcia et al., 2021 for a review). Four articles in our collection illustrate the complexity of foraging decisions related to the optimization of cost-benefit ratios.
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