École Doctorale Frontières du Vivant (FdV) - Programme Bettencourt, Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires, Tour Maine Montparnasse, Paris, 75015, France.
Centre de Primatologie de l'Université de Strasbourg, Fort Foch, Niederhausbergen, 67207, France.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2019 Apr;94(2):483-502. doi: 10.1111/brv.12462. Epub 2018 Sep 13.
When exploiting the environment, animals have to discriminate, track, and integrate salient spatial cues to navigate and identify goal sites. Actually, they have to know what can be found (e.g. what fruit), where (e.g. on which tree) and when (in what season or moment of the year). This is very relevant for primate species as they often live in seasonal and relatively unpredictable environments such as tropical forests. Here, we review and compare different approaches used to investigate primate spatial foraging strategies: from direct observations of wild primates to predictions from statistical simulations, including experimental approaches on both captive and wild primates, and experiments in captivity using virtual reality technology. Within this framework, most of these studies converge to show that many primate species can (i) remember the location of most of food resources well, and (ii) often seem to have a goal-oriented path towards spatially permanent resources. Overall, primates likely use mental maps to plan different foraging strategies to enhance their fitness. The majority of studies suggest that they may organise spatial information on food resources into topological maps: they use landmarks to navigate and encode local spatial information with regard to direction and distance. Even though these studies were able to show that primates can remember food quality (what) and its location (where), still very little is known on how they incorporate the temporal knowledge of available food (when). Future studies should attempt to increase our understanding of the potential of primates to learn temporal patterns and how both socio-ecological differences among species and their cognitive abilities influence such behavioural strategies.
在利用环境时，动物必须进行辨别、跟踪和整合显著的空间线索，以进行导航和识别目标地点。实际上，它们必须知道能找到什么（例如，哪种水果）、在哪里（例如，在那棵树上）以及何时（在哪个季节或一年中的什么时候）。这对于灵长类物种来说非常重要，因为它们通常生活在季节性和相对不可预测的环境中，如热带雨林。在这里，我们回顾和比较了用于研究灵长类动物空间觅食策略的不同方法：从对野生灵长类动物的直接观察到统计模拟的预测，包括对圈养和野生灵长类动物的实验方法，以及使用虚拟现实技术在圈养环境中进行的实验。在这个框架内，这些研究大多表明，许多灵长类物种可以（i）很好地记住大多数食物资源的位置，并且（ii）经常似乎有一个面向目标的路径走向空间上永久性的资源。总体而言，灵长类动物可能使用心理地图来规划不同的觅食策略以提高它们的适应性。大多数研究表明，它们可能将食物资源的空间信息组织成拓扑地图：它们使用地标进行导航，并根据方向和距离对局部空间信息进行编码。尽管这些研究表明灵长类动物可以记住食物的质量（什么）及其位置（哪里），但对于它们如何将可获得食物的时间知识（何时）纳入其中，仍然知之甚少。未来的研究应该尝试增加我们对灵长类动物学习时间模式的潜力的理解，以及物种之间的社会生态差异及其认知能力如何影响这种行为策略。
