ManyPrimates, Aguenounoun, G., Allritz, M., Altschul, D. M., Ballesta, S. Beaud, A., Bohn, M., Bornbusch, S. L., Brandão, A., Brooks, J., Bugnyar, T., Bustamante, L., Call, J., Canteloup, C., Caspar, K. R., de Sousa, A. A., DeTroy, S. E., Eppley, T. M., Fichtel, C., Fischer, J., Gong, C., Grange, J. A., Grebe, N. M., Hanus, D., Haus, D., Haux, L. M., Héjja-Brichard, Y., Helman, A., Hernadi, I., Hernandez-Aguilar, R. A., Hermann, E., Hopper, L. M., Howard, L. H., Huang, L., Huskisson, S. M., Jacobs, I., Jin, Z., Joly, M., Kani, F., Keupp, S., Kiefer, E., Knakker, B., Kóczán, K., Kraus, L., Kwok, S. C., Lefrançois, M., Lewis, L., Liu, S., Llorente, M., Lonsdorf, E., Loyant, L., Majecka, K., Maurits, L., Meunier, H., Mobili, F., Morino, L., Motes-Rodrigo, A., Nijman, V., Ihomi, C. N., Persson, T., Pietraszewski, D., Parrish, J. F. R., Roig, A., Sánchez-Amaro, A., Sato, Y., Sauciuc, G-A., Schrock, A. E., Schweinfurth, M. K., Seed, A., Shearer, C. L., Šlipogor, V., Su, Y., Sutherland, K., Tan, J., Taylor, D., Troisi, C. A., Völter, C. J., Warren, E., Watzek, J., Zablocki-Thomas, P. (2022). The evolution of primate short-term memory. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 9(4), 428-516. https://doi.org/10.26451/abc.09.04.06.2022

Short-term memory is implicated in a range of cognitive abilities and is critical for understanding primate cognitive evolution. To investigate the effects of phylogeny, ecology and sociality on short-term memory, we tested the largest and most diverse primate sample to date (421 non-human primates across 41 species) in an experimental delayed-response task. Our results confirm previous findings that longer delays decrease memory performance across species and taxa. Our analyses demonstrate a considerable contribution of phylogeny over ecological and social factors on the distribution of short-term memory performance in primates; closely related species had more similar short-term memory abilities. Overall, individuals in the branch of Hominoidea performed better compared to Cercopithecoidea, who in turn performed above Platyrrhini and Strepsirrhini. Interdependencies between phylogeny and socioecology of a given species presented an obstacle to disentangling the effects of each of these factors on the evolution of short-term memory capacity. However, this study offers an important step forward in understanding the interspecies and individual variation in short-term memory ability by providing the first phylogenetic reconstruction of this trait’s evolutionary history. The dataset constitutes a unique resource for studying the evolution of primate cognition and the role of short-term memory in other cognitive abilities.

Cognitive evolution, Short-term memory, Primate cognition, Phylogenetic analysis