Understanding White-Nosed Coati Vocalisations

Dr Emily Grout is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Cumbria and a post-doctoral researcher at the Max-Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Konstanz, Germany. 

Emily's research explores how vocal communication is used in the collective movements of social groups, studying the behaviour of white nosed coatis, pictured above right. Using miniaturised tracking devices, Emily has recorded the localisations and vocalisations of all members of three wild white-nosed coati groups inhabiting dense tropical forests in Panama. 

Emily is particularly interested in how coatis use vocalisations to coordinate with one another, especially when deciding when and where to travel, and when they are finding one another again. She hopes her work will have implications for our understanding on the costs and benefits of group living for this and potentially other animal species. 

Further, Emily aims to incorporate the nutritional landscape into her research, by mapping seasonal fruit availability for example, to understand how the quality, quantity, and distribution of resources shapes the collective decisions made by coati groups.