Cognition, Foraging, and Energetics in Extant and Extinct Primates

Solving foraging problems requires animals to make adaptive decisions that optimize costs and benefits, and is thought to have been an important driver in the evolution of enhanced cognitive skills in primates. Interspecies comparisons across the primate order suggest variation in several key cognitive processes mobilized for foraging, but which socio-ecological factors drive these differences, and how they affect individual fitness are fundamental unanswered questions. Primates can, for example, remember the location and quality of resources in their environment, and use topological representations of space to navigate when foraging. However, there are still gaps in our knowledge regarding the role and neural correlates of more sophisticated cognitive mechanisms such as temporal memory, large-scale spatial planning, and information sharing. Indeed, many foraging behaviors likely require the integration of multiple cognitive abilities spanning both the ecological and social domains. A more complete understanding of the diversity in foraging strategies and cognitive abilities in different socio-ecological contexts is crucial to elucidating cognitive evolution in primates past and present.

This interdisciplinary Research Topic aims to bring together current advances in the fields of socio-ecology, neuroethology, movement ecology, energetics, and primate foraging strategies in relation to cognition. The focus will be on the mechanisms that underlie foraging decisions at the individual and collective levels. We will place particular emphasis on the cognitive abilities needed to support complex foraging strategies in challenging and rapidly changing socio-ecological environments, and will integrate these findings with studies from laboratory and captive environments. The discussion arising from this interdisciplinary exchange should foster the debate on the evolutionary origins of foraging cognition within a wider scientific community of behavioral ecologists, comparative psychologists, neuroscientists, paleoanthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. Contributions about both modern primates and extinct hominins, and from laboratory settings and fieldwork, as well as evolutionary perspectives, are encouraged. The resulting synthesis will have important implications not only for a deeper understanding of the evolution of primate cognition but also for captive primate welfare and wild primate conservation.

We welcome manuscripts focused on living and/or extinct primates and on the following subjects:
• Foraging cognition and its neural correlates
• Spatial foraging decisions
• Time-sensitive foraging decisions
• Ecological complexity of extant and extinct primate environments
• Landscape use
• Landscape energetics
• Group foraging movements: leadership and collective decisions
• Social information transfer in foraging contexts
• Behavioral and physiological adaptations to anthropogenic habitats
• Interactions of microbiota on metabolism and foraging cognition
• Physical cognition (e.g. tool use, food processing) in the context of foraging
• Life history and foraging strategies
• Links between foraging strategies and fitness outcomes
• Self-medication
• Language and spatial coding of the environment

We call for original papers, reviews, and other forms of scientific communication with particular attention to current advances in the field of foraging cognition.