ANT 322 Primate Biology and Behavior

Female and Male Relationships

Females:

· What do females spend most of their adult lives doing?

· Females negotiate complex social relationships under what type of social organization? (i.e., female or male philopatry? Social or solitary species?)

· What benefits are there to effective negotiations for females?

· Relationships are categorized based on the types and intensity of competition; when are relationships more hierarchical? Less?

· Do alliances occur more or less in hierarchical societies?

· Do affiliative behaviors occur more or less in hierarchical socieites? What are some examples of affiliative behaviors?

· Define: postconflict resolution

· How do the terms female-bonded and non-female-bonded relate to within-group and between-group contest competition, female philopatry/dispersal, and in which primate group are strong female bonds most common?

· How do female and male agonistic behaviors in baboons vary with regard to the “food tests” conducted by Irven DeVore? What was observed about social ranking and grooming behaviors?

· Define: rank inheritance. What is a key mechanism that maintains the system of matrilineal rank inheritance?

o Define: dependent rank and basic rank

· Define: reconciliation, displacement activities

· Define: age-related rank. How do females in groups characterized by age-related rank interact with males (i.e., what are “cross-sex bonds”)?

· Define: female-defense polygyny and resource-defense polygyny

· Define: local resource competition; does it lead to higher or lower rates of female dispersal? How does it affect population growth?

· Define: local resource enhancement; when is this likely to be seen (i.e., under what population and competition situations)?

Males:

· How does the male primate lifespan compare to the female lifespan ; who tends to live longer?

· Whereas high quality food resources affect female reproductive success, what resource most strongly affects male reproductive success? What do males compete over?

· How do aggressive interactions among males compare with those of females?

· Male infant carrying among baboons: what is the “protection hypothesis”? What is the “agonistic buffering hypothesis”? How do these hypotheses explain when and why a male would carry an infant into combat with another male?

· Which primate behaviors are used to establish “affiliations”?

· How do “affiliations” differ from “associations”?

· What is meant by “coalitionary support?”

· Patrilocal societies: What are two advantages males that remain in their natal groups have over males that disperse?

· With regard to chimpanzees, how do males rise in rank? Under what conditions are coalitions likely to be formed and are they stable?

· How do female chimpanzees influence male rank relationships after two males have been fighting with each other?

· What determines rank in male bonobos? Do they have coalitions and reconciliatory behaviors as the chimpanzees do? Why or why not?

· Ranks in age-graded groups: in some primates where males disperse, a dominant father allows one of his sons to stay in the natal group—why? What are the advantages of this?

· Regarding gorillas how do males in unimale groups compare with males in multimale groups in terms of competition and social interaction (i.e., within-group/between-group competition, aggression, interaction or avoidance, reconciliation, female intervention, etc.)?

· Do males in multi-male heterosexual groups such as the mountain gorilla, hamadrayas baboon, and red howler monkey, maintain stronger social relationships among themselves or with females?

· In primate groups where males disperse, are males more likely to challenge other males that are close to them in rank or far from them in rank? Why? Are coalitions more likely to form in high, middle, or low ranking males? Why?