Research Affiliate
Contact: isaac.schamberg@anthro.ox.ac.uk
Bio
My PhD (2016, University of Pennsylvania) examined communication and travel coordination in great apes. Since then, I have conducted postdoctoral research on combinatorial communication, the cognitive underpinnings of primate communication, and flexibility in the bonobo vocal repertoire in the Department of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Zurich, where I am currently a Senior Scientist. I also spent several years as a College Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.
Research
I have been observing bonobos (Pan paniscus) in the wild for 15 years. I believe long-term observations of animals in their natural habitat is the best way to understand behaviour and its evolution, and I have therefore spent extended periods in the field. I worked initially at the LuiKotale fieldsite in central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Since 2018, I have been conducting comparative research on three communities of bonobos at the Kokolopori fieldsite in DRC.
My research aims to decipher the vocalisations of bonobos in order to gain insights into the evolution of language. My work has used a combination of behavioural observations and acoustic analysis to shed light on the phylogeny of linguistic features such as arbitrariness (Schamberg et al. 2024), combinatoriality (Schamberg et al. 2017), and meaning (Schamberg et al. 2016; 2018).
My most recent project examines the evolution of cooperative communication - that is, the transition from communication that aims to manipulate behaviour (the imperative signalling observed in other primates) to communication produced with the goal of informing and cooperating (the declarative communication of language) to ask: How and why did this communicative shift occur over the course of human evolution?
Teaching
From 2018 to 2021 I taught at Harvard University (HEB 1330: ‘Primate Social Behavior’; HEB 1334: ‘Grunts, gurgles, and grammar: primate communication and the evolution of language’; HEB 1280: ‘Human Nature’). I have also taught at the University of Oxford (‘Human Evolution: Primatological and Paleontological Approaches’) and the University of Pennsylvania (‘Animal Behavior’ and ‘Cognitive Development’).
Selected Publications
Schamberg, Surbeck, & Townsend (2024) Cross-population variation in usage of a call combination: evidence of signal usage flexibility in wild bonobos. Animal Cognition. doi.org/10.1007/s10071-024-01884-4
Schamberg, Clay, Townsend, & Surbeck (2023) Between-group variation in production of pant-grunt vocalizations by wild bonobos (Pan paniscus). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. doi.org/10.1007/s00265-022-03285-4
Schamberg, Wittig, & Crockford (2018) Call type signals caller goal: a new take on ultimate and proximate influences in vocal production. Biological Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12437
Schamberg, Cheney, Clay, Hohmann, & Seyfarth (2016) Call combinations, vocal exchanges and interparty movement in wild bonobos. Animal Behaviour. doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.10.003
