As a part of growing up, immature orangutans must acquire vast repertoires of skills and knowledge, a process that takes several years of observational social learning and subsequent practice. Adult female and male orangutans show behavioral differences including sex-specific foraging patterns and male-biased dispersal. Ehmann et al. investigated how these differing life trajectories affect social interest and emerging ecological knowledge in immatures. They analyzed 15 years of detailed observational data on social learning, associations, and diet repertoires of 50 immatures (16 females and 34 males), from two orangutan populations. Specific to the feeding context, they found sex differences in the development of social interest: Throughout the dependency period, immature females direct most of their social attention at their mothers, whereas immature males show an increasing attentional preference for individuals other than their mothers. When attending to non-mother individuals, males show a significant bias toward immigrant individuals and a trend for a bias toward adult males; in contrast, females preferentially attend to neighboring residents. These results suggest that immature orangutans show attentional biases through which they learn from individuals with the most relevant ecological knowledge. Diversifying their skills and knowledge likely helps males when they move to a new area. The image shows Cinnamon peering at her mother Cissy, who is using a stick tool to get honey out of a tree hole.
Image Credit: Guilhem Duvot
Essays
Neural oscillations are a start toward understanding brain activity rather than the end
PLOS Biology: published May 4, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001234
Cell-level metadata are indispensable for documenting single-cell sequencing datasets
PLOS Biology: published May 4, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001077
Perspectives
A generation of junior faculty is at risk from the impacts of COVID-19
PLOS Biology: published May 25, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001266
How hype and hyperbole distort the neuroscience of sex differences
PLOS Biology: published May 10, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001253
Has GWAS lost its status as a paragon of open science?
PLOS Biology: published May 3, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001242
Primer
Programmed cell death 1 ligand (PD-L1) on T cells generates Treg suppression from memory
PLOS Biology: published May 19, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001272
Related Articles
Research Articles
Maximizing regional biodiversity requires a mosaic of protection levels
PLOS Biology: published May 19, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001195
The growth factor BMP11 is required for the development and evolution of a male exaggerated weapon and its associated fighting behavior in a water strider
PLOS Biology: published May 11, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001157
Cryptic surface-associated multicellularity emerges through cell adhesion and its regulation
PLOS Biology: published May 13, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001250
Immature wild orangutans acquire relevant ecological knowledge through sex-specific attentional biases during social learning
PLOS Biology: published May 19, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001173
Dynamic patterns of correlated activity in the prefrontal cortex encode information about social behavior
PLOS Biology: published May 3, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001235
The human visual system differentially represents subjectively and objectively invisible stimuli
PLOS Biology: published May 5, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001241
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity
PLOS Biology: published May 12, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001215
Related Articles
RHEB/mTOR hyperactivity causes cortical malformations and epileptic seizures through increased axonal connectivity
PLOS Biology: published May 26, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001279
Ventricular, atrial, and outflow tract heart progenitors arise from spatially and molecularly distinct regions of the primitive streak
PLOS Biology: published May 17, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001200
Extracellular DJ-1 induces sterile inflammation in the ischemic brain
PLOS Biology: published May 20, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000939
Glyphosate inhibits melanization and increases susceptibility to infection in insects
PLOS Biology: published May 12, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001182
Sensitivity to expression levels underlies differential dominance of a putative null allele of the Drosophila tβh gene in behavioral phenotypes
PLOS Biology: published May 10, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001228
Adipose triglyceride lipase protects renal cell endocytosis in a Drosophila dietary model of chronic kidney disease
PLOS Biology: published May 4, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001230
The molecular and metabolic program by which white adipocytes adapt to cool physiologic temperatures
PLOS Biology: published May 12, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000988
Generation of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species is controlled by ATPase inhibitory factor 1 and regulates cognition
PLOS Biology: published May 13, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001252
Chemokines act as phosphatidylserine-bound “find-me” signals in apoptotic cell clearance
PLOS Biology: published May 26, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001259
EfgA is a conserved formaldehyde sensor that leads to bacterial growth arrest in response to elevated formaldehyde
PLOS Biology: published May 26, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001208
A chemical screen for modulators of mRNA translation identifies a distinct mechanism of toxicity for sphingosine kinase inhibitors
PLOS Biology: published May 25, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001263
Small molecule Y-320 stimulates ribosome biogenesis, protein synthesis, and aminoglycoside-induced premature termination codon readthrough
PLOS Biology: published May 3, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001221
Structural basis for SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies with novel binding epitopes
PLOS Biology: published May 7, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001209
Methods and Resources
An update to Hippocampome.org by integrating single-cell phenotypes with circuit function in vivo
PLOS Biology: published May 6, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001213
Integrated transcriptomics and epigenomics reveal chamber-specific and species-specific characteristics of human and mouse hearts
PLOS Biology: published May 18, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001229
Multiplex qPCR discriminates variants of concern to enhance global surveillance of SARS-CoV-2
PLOS Biology: published May 7, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001236
Meta-Research Articles
Meta-analysis of variation suggests that embracing variability improves both replicability and generalizability in preclinical research
PLOS Biology: published May 19, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001009
Epidemiology and reporting characteristics of preclinical systematic reviews
PLOS Biology: published May 5, 2021 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001177