MacaqueNet: Advancing comparative behavioural research through large-scale collaboration

De Moor D 1 , Skelton M 1 , MacaqueNet , Amici F 2 , Arlet ME 3 , Balasubramaniam KN 4 Show all authors , Ballesta S 5 , Berghänel A 6 , Berman CM 7 , Bernstein SK 8 , Bhattacharjee D 9 , Bliss-Moreau E 10 , Brotcorne F 11 , Butovskaya M 12 , Campbell LAD 13 , Carosi M 14 , Chatterjee M 15 , Cooper MA 16 , Cowl VB 17 , De la O C 18 , De Marco A 19 , Dettmer AM 20 , Dhawale AK 21 , Erinjery JJ 22 , Evans CL 23 , Fischer J 24 , García-Nisa I 25 , Giraud G 11 , Hammer R 26 , Hansen MF 27 , Holzner A 28 , Kaburu S 29 , Konečná M 30 , Kumara HN 31 , Larrivaz M 32 , Leca JB 33 , Legrand M 34 , Lehmann J 35 , Li JH 36 , Lezé AS 37 , MacIntosh A 38 , Majolo B 39 , Maréchal L 39 , Marty PR 40 , Massen JJM 9 , Maulany RI 41 , McCowan B 42 , McFarland R 43 , Merieau P 37 , Meunier H 5 , Micheletta J 44 , Mishra PS 31 , Sah SAM 45 , Molesti S 46 , Morrow KS 47 , Müller-Klein N 48 , Ngakan PO 41 , Palagi E 49 , Petit O 50 , Pflüger LS 26 , di Sorrentino EP 51 , Raghaven R 52 , Raimbault G 34 , Ram S 52 , Reichard UH 53 , Riley EP 54 , Rincon AV 44 , Ruppert N 45 , Sadoughi B 5 , Santhosh K 31 , Schino G 51 , Sheeran LK 55 , Silk JB 56 , Singh M 57 , Sinha A 52 , Sosa S 58 , Stribos MS 9 , Sueur C 59 , Tiddi B 60 , Tkaczynski PJ 61 , Trebouet F 62 , Widdig A 28 , Whitehouse J 43 , Wooddell LJ 63 , Xia DP 36 , von Fersen L 64 , Young C 43 , Schülke O 65 , Ostner J 65 , Neumann C 24 , Duboscq J 66 , Brent LJN 1

Affiliations 

  • 1 School of Psychology, Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
  • 2 Research Group for Human Biology and Primate Cognition, Biology Institute, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
  • 3 Faculty of Biology, Institute of Human Biology and Evolution, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland
  • 4 Faculty of Science & Engineering, School of Life Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
  • 5 Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Adaptatives, Strasbourg, France
  • 6 Domestication Lab, Department of Interdisciplinary Life Sciences, Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  • 7 Program in Evolution, Ecology and Behavior, Department of Anthropology, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
  • 8 Division of Natural Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics, Department of Biology, University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, USA
  • 9 Animal Behavior & Cognition, Department of Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
  • 10 Department of Psychology and the California National Primate Research Center, University of California at Davis, Davis, California, USA
  • 11 Primatology Research Group, Research Unit SPHERES, The University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
  • 12 Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
  • 13 Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  • 14 Department of Sciences, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy
  • 15 Conservation Science and Outreach, North of England Zoological Society, Cheshire, UK
  • 16 Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
  • 17 Science Department, North of England Zoological Society, Chester, UK
  • 18 FES Zaragoza, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
  • 19 Fondazione Ethoikos, Convento dell'Osservanza, Radicondoli, Italy
  • 20 Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
  • 21 Animal Behaviour and Cognition Programme, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, India
  • 22 Department of Zoology, Kannur University, Kannur, India
  • 23 Department of Anthropology, Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre, Durham University, Durham, UK
  • 24 Cognitive Ethology Lab, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany
  • 25 Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, UK
  • 26 Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  • 27 Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
  • 28 Behavioural Ecology Research Group, Institute of Biology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
  • 29 School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, Southwell, UK
  • 30 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
  • 31 Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Coimbatore, India
  • 32 Départment d'Anthropologie, Faculté des Arts et des Sciences, Udem, Montréal, Quebec, Canada
  • 33 Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
  • 34 Centre de Primatologie de l'Université de Strasbourg, Niederhausbergen, France
  • 35 Whitelands College, Roehampton University, London, UK
  • 36 International Collaborative Research Center for Huangshan Biodiversity and Tibetan Macaque Behavioral Ecology, School of Resource and Environmental Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei, China
  • 37 ZooParc de Beauval et Beauval Nature, Saint-Aignan, France
  • 38 Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Japan
  • 39 School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK
  • 40 Wildlife Park Goldau, Goldau, Switzerland
  • 41 Forest Conservation Department, Hasanuddin University, Makassar, Indonesia
  • 42 Department of Population Health & Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California at Davis, Davis, California, USA
  • 43 NTU Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
  • 44 Department of Psychology, Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK
  • 45 School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia
  • 46 CLLE, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, France
  • 47 Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
  • 48 Institute for Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany
  • 49 Department of Biology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
  • 50 Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Université Clermont-Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France
  • 51 Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy
  • 52 Animal Behaviour and Cognition Programme, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru, India
  • 53 Anthropology Program, School of Anthropology, Political Science and Sociology, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, USA
  • 54 Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA
  • 55 Anthropology, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington, USA
  • 56 School of Human Evolution and Social Change and Institute of Human Origins, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
  • 57 Biopsychology Laboratory, Institution of Excellence, University of Mysore, Mysuru, India
  • 58 Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
  • 59 Institut pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (UMR 7178), Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
  • 60 Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, Kent, UK
  • 61 Research Centre for Evolutionary Anthropology & Palaeoecology, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK
  • 62 Department of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
  • 63 Department of Neurosurgery, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
  • 64 Nuremberg Zoo, Nürnberg, Germany
  • 65 Primate Cognition, Göttingen, Germany
  • 66 Behavioral Ecology Department, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
J Anim Ecol, 2025 Feb 11.
PMID: 39934999 DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.14223

Abstract

There is a vast and ever-accumulating amount of behavioural data on individually recognised animals, an incredible resource to shed light on the ecological and evolutionary drivers of variation in animal behaviour. Yet, the full potential of such data lies in comparative research across taxa with distinct life histories and ecologies. Substantial challenges impede systematic comparisons, one of which is the lack of persistent, accessible and standardised databases. Big-team approaches to building standardised databases offer a solution to facilitating reliable cross-species comparisons. By sharing both data and expertise among researchers, these approaches ensure that valuable data, which might otherwise go unused, become easier to discover, repurpose and synthesise. Additionally, such large-scale collaborations promote a culture of sharing within the research community, incentivising researchers to contribute their data by ensuring their interests are considered through clear sharing guidelines. Active communication with the data contributors during the standardisation process also helps avoid misinterpretation of the data, ultimately improving the reliability of comparative databases. Here, we introduce MacaqueNet, a global collaboration of over 100 researchers (https://macaquenet.github.io/) aimed at unlocking the wealth of cross-species data for research on macaque social behaviour. The MacaqueNet database encompasses data from 1981 to the present on 61 populations across 14 species and is the first publicly searchable and standardised database on affiliative and agonistic animal social behaviour. We describe the establishment of MacaqueNet, from the steps we took to start a large-scale collective, to the creation of a cross-species collaborative database and the implementation of data entry and retrieval protocols. We share MacaqueNet's component resources: an R package for data standardisation, website code, the relational database structure, a glossary and data sharing terms of use. With all these components openly accessible, MacaqueNet can act as a fully replicable template for future endeavours establishing large-scale collaborative comparative databases.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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