
DUBOSCQ Julie

I am a behavioural biologist interested in the evolution, functions and mechanims of sociality. I mainly study social relationships and social processes in macaques in order to understand how and why they form and maintain relationships.
I am also an associate director of the Macaca Nigra Project (MNP, https://www.macaca-nigra.org/), a research-conservation-education field project dedicated to the study and conservation of the crested macaques, one of the flagship species of North Sulawesi. Crested macaques are critically endangered due to continuous threats from human expanding population, habitat loss, and hunting.
I am studying links between social tolerance, social diversity and social complexity in a homogenous yet diverse primate genus, Macaca, in order to unravel the causes and consequences of social complexity. To this end, we gathered an exhaustive data set on social behaviour of macaques within a collaborative network of more than 50 studies from more than 40 researchers on at least 15 different macaque species. Analyses are on-going. Stay tune!
Many primates live in stable and permanent social groups, where individuals interact regularly with each other. Social groups are structured according to dominance hierarchies and kinship ties, leading to modular social networks of relationships. Primates have the capabilities to recognise individually each of their group members and to classify them into categories based on dominance rank (up or down the hierarchy compared to themselves), affiliative ties (strong vs weak bonds), and kinship (kin vs non-kin). This social awareness allows individuals to interact consequently and adequately. More generally, in these social societies, social skills may be related to survival and reproduction. However, little is known about the extent to which the type of social network, the biases in dominance, kinship and social preference are linked to the degree of social awareness.
Understanding social relationships between individuals is key to comprehend social evolution. Primates have evolved a large diversity of social systems and structures. Macaques are the most geographically widespread and a behaviourally diverse genus. They express different styles of social tolerance depending on the strength of kin bias. The evolution of this social gradient is still poorly understood because estimating genetic relatedness to assess kin bias has been challenging, notably in wild or free-ranging populations. This project therefore aims to study the link between social behaviour and kinship and the inheritance of social networks on the long-term in different macaque species with contrasting social styles (tolerant vs intolerant) combining long-term behavioural and state-of-the-art genomic data.
I study two very social species of primates but with very different social styles, the Japanese Macaca fuscata and the crested macaques Macaca nigra. Both form large social bisexual multi-generational groups. The former is “despotic” with a strict hierarchy and a strong kin bias in social interactions leading to clustered social networks; the latter is “tolerant” with a less steep hierarchy and a weak kin bias leading to denser social networks.
Crested macaques are studied as part of the Macaca Nigra Project in Sulawesi, Indonesia, in collaboration with Muhammad Agil and Dyah Perwiasarih-Farajallah from IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia. The project is studying the biology of the species since 2006 (www.macaca-nigra.org).
Fig. 1 Crested macaques in Tangkoko Reserve, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. From left to right and top
to bottom: social time in the trees with two females in the foreground exchanging friendly bared-teeth
and lip-smacking expressions, an infant suckling his mother, a female presenting her sexual swelling
to a male, a male watching other group members interacting nearby, a male displaying a silent-bared
teeth face. Photo credit: Jérôme Micheletta (all but social time) and Meldi Tamengge (social time) / The
Macaca Nigra Project
Japanese macaques are studied in Yakushima island and in Koshima island, in the south of Japan where they have been studied since the 1980s and 1950s respectively, in collaboration with Andrew MacIntosh from the Kyoto University Wildlife Research Center.
Main group of Koshima island sunbathing, grooming, resting or feeding on the main beach