About this Research Topic
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.
Keywords: Foraging, Environment, Cognition, Brain, Evolution, Primates
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.