Dr Adriano Reis e Lameira

Supervisor Details

Contact Details

Department of Psychology, University of Warwick

Scientific Background

Research Interests

Our team at ApeTank researches the origins of human behaviour and psychology. We are tantalized about language origin, dance and music evolution, and the precursors of imagination. Why, in more than 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, did these motoric and cognitive systems emerge in our lineage, but none other? How did ancient primates and ape-like ancestors pave the path towards modernity and "humanhood"? We study great ape and children capacities as living replicas of our own extinct ancestors' communication, cognition and culture, their form and function. We rely on behaviour, audio and video observations and experiments in the child lab and in the wild and accredited zoos to assemble real-world data. We are committed to using new research and evidence for sophisticated traits in great apes and new insights into human mind's building blocks to (i) improve primate welfare & husbandry in captivity, (ii) advocate primate conservation & protection in the wild, (iii) inform superior bio-inspired computer modelling and AI applications and (iv) advise stakeholders and law-makers.

Research Groups

ApeTank

Supervision Style

In three words or phrases: motivational, goal-driven, party-hard-work-harder.

Provision of Training

From the beginning of your PhD I expect you to pro-actively figure out appropriate methods and changes to methodology. However, our group of experienced field researchers and post docs, and myself, will always be readily available for support, recommendations, ideas, brainstorming, discussion and advice.

Progression Monitoring and Management

I will expect you to take full ownership of your progression, but you come to me when you need help troubleshooting. I like to be kept up to date and will expect to see evidence of method development/data generation or results on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, depending of the nature of the objectives set between us. I will set out my expectations of your progression at the end of each of our meetings. If these progression criteria are not met we will always discuss a plan of action together. I have high expectations and will push you to your full potential. I am here for advice and guidance to help you reach the goals you set for yourself.

Communication

I am known to email my team/PhD students at all hours of the day and night, however I will not expect you to do the same. The team has a WhatsApp group chat with which we regularly communicate during the week and weekends. Whilst I expect you to keep up with my/ team communications I will expect you to manage your work/life balance. I am happy to discuss any issues that are impacting your ability to fulfil your potential or my/our expectations.

PhD Students can expect scheduled meetings with me:

In a group meeting

At least once per week

In year 1 of PhD study

At least once per week

In year 2 of PhD study

At least once per week

In year 3 of PhD study

At least once per week

These meetings will be face to face. I am usually contactable for an instant response every working day.

Work Patterns

Certain tasks in my lab need to occur at set times, and students need to be able to commit to a rota/timetable shared with other members of the team.

Notice Period for Feedback

I need at least 1 week’s notice to provide feedback on written work of up to 5000 words.

MIBTP Project Details

Current Projects (2025-26)

Primary supervisor for:

Wild orangutan grammatical rules and the evolution of language

See the PhD Opportunities section to see if this project is currently open for applications via MIBTP.

Please Note: The main page lists projects via BBSRC Research Theme(s) quoted and then relevant Topic(s).

Wild orangutan grammatical rules and the evolution of language

Secondary Supervisor(s): Prof Thomas Hills

University of Registration: University of Warwick

BBSRC Research Themes:

Understanding the Rules of Life (Neuroscience and Behaviour, Systems Biology)

Project Outline

Language defines being human, but its evolutionary origins defy scientific explanation. Language does not fossilize but this does not mean that language's origins and evolutionary timeline are lost forever. Studying the vocal behaviour of (nonhuman) great apes – our closest living relatives – allows inferring human ancestors’ putative capacities that laid our lineage on a path towards fully fledged language. Among great apes, orangutans represent the first diverging lineage within the Hominid family, and thus, are more distantly related to humans than chimpanzees, bonobos or gorillas. However, unlike their African cousins, orangutans are the only known hominid besides humans to combine consonant-like and vowel-like call into complex combinations. Accordingly, orangutan vocal system provides a unique model to understand why the two elemental building blocks of spoken language began to combine, as well as, critically, understand the set of combinatoric rules that governed their combination, providing the selective feedstock for the evolution of human grammar. This project will involve multi-year and multi-site fieldwork with wild orangutans across several research stations in Sumatra, Indonesia. The project will be methodologically based on playback experiments aimed at shedding new light into how orangutans perceive various combinatoric rules. The project will focus on the perception and processing of call combinations assembled on the basis of context-free, merge and/or recursive rules – rules classically believed to represent neural-computations exclusively accessible to language-able individuals, but now known to be also deployed by wild orangutans to generate combinations made up by consonant-like and vowel-like calls. The main objective of the project will be to determine if orangutans react differently towards different combinatoric rules as well as their violation, demonstrating whether and how they are sensitive to, and have expectations about, advanced combinatoric rules. The implementation of playbacks across independent populations of the same species living within Leuser Ecosystem will also allow investigating the extent to which recognising and deciphering different combinatoric rules is culturally determined, as it occurs across different human languages. This project will be the first to systematically investigate the perception of complex combinatorial structures in a nonhuman great ape species, providing unprecedented insight into the cognitive and neural capacities that may have laid the foundations for human language. By revealing whether wild orangutans can detect and react to nuanced patterns and violations of combinatorial rules, this study will address fundamental questions about the evolutionary roots of grammar. In doing so, it will offer a comparative framework for understanding how cultural and environmental factors may shape the recognition and processing of combinatorial patterns, thus, bridging a critical gap in our understanding of the deep evolutionary history of language.