July 2025

Two new publications by members of our working group, Marlen and Wytse, can now be viewed online.
Congratulations on the publications!

12. Mai 2025

Our PhD student Deb has returned from collecting data in the SUAQ field!
We're looking forward to seeing the results of her data collection.

22. January 2025

A new publication by Marlen is now online. 
The article 'The role of exploration and exploitation in primate communication' has been published in 
‘Proceedings of the Royal Society B- Biological Sciences’.
Click here for the online version.

30. October 2024

A new publication by Marlen is now online. 
The chapter 'Multimodal communication in non-human primates' will appear in the 
Reference module in Social Sciences of the third edition of the ‘International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics’ which is expected to be published in March 2026. 
Click here for the online version of the chapter.

10. October 2024 - 31. January 2025

The Mensch und Tier Foundation, with which Marlen works closely, is awarding two postdoctoral fellowships to promote young scientists in great ape research, one of which includes a stay in the field (Democratic Republic of Congo/Indonesia), the other does not. The fellows can be accompanied by Marlen if desired and can also be provided with a workplace as a guest researcher in our working group. 
Scholarship with field stay: more...
Scholarship without field stay: more…

5.- 7. June 2024

Angèle, Marlen and Wytse attended the 10th meeting of the European Federation for Primatology in Lausanne (CH).
Angèle held a talk about "Individual differences and plasticity in the communicative behaviour of captive and semi-wild chimpanzees" and Wytse introduced their poster on the topic "Development and plasticity of multimodal communication during joint activities of German children".

April 2024

Our Ph.D. student Deborah Galeone set off to collect data on Sumatran orangutans at the SUAQ field station in Indonesia.

13.- 16. March 2024

The team of the "Pathways to Language" working group attended the Gesellschaft for Primatology (GfP) conference in Konstanz, Germany.
Angèle gave a talk on "Individual differences and plasticity in the communicative behaviour of captive and semi-wild chimpanzees".
As well as many interesting talks, the programme included a visit to the Affenberg in Salem.

26.- 28. January 2024

Angèle and Deborah took part in the retreat for doctoral students organised by EVEREST: Evolution and Ecology Research School Tübingen.

January 2024

We are very happy to welcome two new PhD students, Deborah Galeone and Wytse Wilhelm, to our group.
Deborah will focus on individual variation and plasticity in communicative interactions of wild and zoo-housed orang-utans, while Wytse will assess the communication for social coordination of human children in large-scale industrial and small-scale traditional societies.

23. August 2023 

Marlen gave a virtual talk on nonvocal communicative repertoires in immature orang-utans at the International Primatology Congress in Kuching, Malaysia, as part of the symposium “Coordinated interactions in primates”

27.- 28. September 2023

Angele and Marlen attended the Protolang meeting in Rome, Europe’s largest interdisciplinary conference for researchers interested in language evolution. Marlen gave her first-ever plenary talk, titled “Plasticity in great ape gesture: from individual- to species-level variation”.

16. October 2023

The new semester begins! In WiSe 2023/2024 Marlen will teach lectures in “Primate Evolution” and “Perspectives in Human Evolution”,
as well as the undergraduate seminar “Primate Behavioural Ecology” together with Angele