VOCAL COMMUNICATION OF WILD CRESTED MACAQUES (Macaca nigra)

Maria Rosdalima Panggur, IPB - 2014 completed 

Macaca nigra is one of seven Sulawesi macaques’ species, endemic to northern part of Sulawesi. The species is one representative of highly tolerant species of macaques that has received less attention than low tolerance species (e.g. rhesus macaque, M. mulatta). This study presents an overview over the vocal repertoire of wild crested macaques (Macaca nigra) in order to get a comprehensive picture of their communication. The calls were categorized according to the social context in which they were uttered. Each call types within context are presented in the form of spectograms along with descriptive statistics of the different acoustic parameters measured. M. nigra issued 11 call types which were distributed in five distinct social contexts and one loud call. The five social contexts in which the calls were uttered were affiliation, cohesion (including group movement), agonism, predation, and mating contexts. Loud calls were emitted only by males and in various contexts including non-social context. Calls were highly graded, meaning that measures of acoustic parameters overlapped between different contexts. The behavioural contexts and the use of other communication mode can be considered as a source of variation.

Key words: Crested macaque, Macaca nigra, vocal repertoire, social context