Kyoto University · Psychology
Professor Chie Hashimoto's research lab focuses on primate behavioral ecology and communication, with a particular emphasis on the interplay between environmental factors, human disturbance, and primate socioecology. The lab investigates how ecological gradients and anthropogenic impacts shape primate habitats and behavior, using advanced statistical methods such as principal component analysis to map vegetation and link it to animal distribution. A central theme is the role of operational sex ratio in shaping mating systems and social dynamics, especially in apes like bonobos and chimpanzees. The lab also explores the structure and function of animal communication, employing signal analysis to decode meaningful units in complex vocalizations.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
We analysed the vegetation of the Kalinzu Forest, Uganda, using principal component analysis. We got two components by the analysis: one seemed to indicate the strength of environmental factors characteristic to the western part of the study area, and the other seemed to indicate the extent of disturbance by human exploitation. Using these components, we made a vegetation map that distinguished four types of vegetation: mixed mature forest, Parinari-dominated mature forest, Parinari-dominated se
The operational sex ratio (OSR) is used as a predictor for the intensity of mating competition. While many factors affect the OSR, there tends to be a high male bias in primate species with long interbirth intervals and non-seasonal breeding, such as hominid apes. However, the OSR of bonobos (Pan paniscus) is lower than that of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), which is thought to reduce competitive and aggressive male behaviors. The low OSR of bonobos is considered to result from the early resumpt
Parsing signals from noise is a general problem for signallers and recipients, and for researchers studying communicative systems. Substantial efforts have been invested in comparing how other species encode information and meaning, and how signalling is structured. However, research depends on identifying and discriminating signals that represent meaningful units of analysis. Early approaches to defining signal repertoires applied top-down approaches, classifying cases into predefined signal ty
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