Primate Cooperation
With a PhD titled "Cooperation and economic behaviour in vervet monkeys" I aimed to study cooperation dynamics among multiple individuals of vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops).
I tried to embed economics theories into social behaviours following the principle that animals can trade resources or social behaviours leading to the formation of a competitive market system (biological market). When social organisms clump together, they tend to cooperate if this is beneficial to their fitness. Yet to date little attention has been paid to the social setting in which cooperation naturally occurs.
For this research I used wild vervet monkeys in Loskop Dam Nature Reserve, South Africa. They acted as model species to study cooperation resulting from a feeding experiment.
The results have been published in PLoS ONE and, in the near future, in other journals.