A Fulbrighter Gets the French Prize « Le Monde de la Recherche » for Best Science Thesis

Dr. Cédric Sueur, working at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, was awarded by Le Monde for his work on primates during his PhD thesis research.

Each year, the French newspaper Le Monde gives a prize to the five best theses in science and allows the winners to write an article on their work in the newspaper.  Cédric Sueur's article, published the 15th of October, explained how macaques are able to vote and live in democracy. Macaques live in groups like many animal species. In order to stay cohesive, animals have to take collective decisions, reach consensus and move collectively. Sometimes, however, individuals have different motivations and want to go in different directions at the same time. One solution to stay together and satisfy the majority of group members is to vote.

This process was found in macaques: some individuals advance and displayed unique behaviors in one direction, some other individuals do these behaviors in the other direction but at one moment, all individuals decide to go in only one direction, the one the majority decided. Macaques count the number of individuals in each direction, wait for a quorum, i.e. a minimum number of participants and then choose one direction when this quorum is reached.

However, some scientist may suggest that primates use insights, manipulations or intentions in this voting process but this is not the case. Macaques respond to a sequence of simple rules found in ants, bees and fishes. It seems that general principles underlie collective decision making in animals, whatever the species.

This work was supervised by Dr. Odile Petit from Strasbourg University, president of the French Society for the Study of Animal Behavior and Prof. Jean-Louis Deneubourg from the Free University of Brussels, a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium.