It has been argued that the invention of unidirectional dominance signals has enabled communication about subordination, a pattern of behavior, rather than just submission in the present interaction ( 1, 2, 6). It is a cost-free signal ( 4, 5), in that both sender and receiver, in knowing the likely conflict winner, benefit from the signaling interaction. The signal is a shortcut preventing the conflict from escalating. The sender emits the signal when a conflict arises once it has learned, based on its agonistic interaction history with its opponent, it is likely to lose contests with that opponent. This signal is unidirectional: It is always emitted by the same individual in a pair ( 1– 3). Some primates use a fascinating but poorly studied signal to communicate about dominance. The invention of signals decreasing uncertainty about relationship state is likely to have been critical for the evolution of social complexity and to the emergence of robust power structures that feed down to influence rapidly changing individual behavior. Our results suggest that primates can communicate about behavioral patterns when these concern relationship rules. We rule out alternative hypotheses, including an underlying reciprocity rule, temperament, and proximity effects. We predict and find that deceasing receiver uncertainty through peaceful signal exchange facilitates the development of higher quality social relationships: Individuals exchanging the peaceful variant groom and reconcile more frequently and fight less frequently than individuals exchanging signals only in the conflict context or no signals. We hypothesize that to decrease receiver uncertainty that the signal object is subordination, senders shift contextual usage from the conflict context, where the signal evolved, to a peaceful one, in which submission is unwarranted. In this study, we show that a special, unidirectional, cost-free dominance-related signal used by monkeys (pigtailed macaques: Macaca nemestrina) means submission (immediate behavior) or subordination (pattern of behavior) depending on the context of usage. Many animals can communicate about immediate behavior, but to date, none have been reported to communicate about behavior during future interactions. A central issue in the evolution of social complexity and the evolution of communication concerns the capacity to communicate about increasingly abstract objects and concepts.
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