| Literature DB >> 22194923 |
Richard McFarland1, Bonaventura Majolo.
Abstract
Social relationships between group members are a key feature of many animal societies. The quality of social relationships has been described by three main components: value, compatibility and security, based on the benefits, tenure and stability of social exchanges. We aimed to analyse whether this three component structure could be used to describe the quality of social relationships in wild Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus). Moreover, we examined whether relationship quality was affected by the sex, age and rank differences between social partners, and investigated the asymmetric nature of social relationships. We collected over 1,900 hours of focal data on seven behavioural variables measuring relationship quality, and used principal component analysis to investigate how these variables clustered together. We found that relationship quality in wild Barbary macaques can be described by a three component structure that represents the value, compatibility and security of a relationship. Female-female dyads had more valuable relationships and same-age dyads more compatible relationships than any other dyad. Rank difference had no effect on the quality of a social relationship. Finally, we found a high degree of asymmetry in how members of a dyad exchange social behaviour. We argue that the asymmetry of social relationships should be taken into account when exploring the pattern and function of social behaviour in animal societies.Entities:
Mesh:
Year: 2011 PMID: 22194923 PMCID: PMC3237547 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028826
Source DB: PubMed Journal: PLoS One ISSN: 1932-6203 Impact factor: 3.240
Behavioural measures of relationship quality.
| Behaviour | Definition | Mean ± SEper dyad |
| Tolerance | Proportion of successful ≤1.5 metres approaches (approaches that were not followed by aggression or displacement for the first 30 seconds after the approach/all approaches) (%). | 22.52±1.52 |
| Proximity | Proportion of scans in ≤1.5 metre proximity (frequency/total number of scans) (%). | 1.13±0.06 |
| Grooming | Proportion of grooming exchanged (grooming given or received/total focal time) (%). | 8.83±1.25 |
| Grooming asymmetry | Grooming asymmetry index | −0.04±0.05 |
| Grooming solicitations | Frequency of grooming solicitation (i.e. when one monkey ‘presents’ a body part to be groomed by another monkey) (events/hour). | 0.02±0.002 |
| Aggression | Frequency of aggression exchanged (events/hour) | 0.05±0.004 |
| Agonistic support | Proportion of times in which one member of dyad supported another in an agonistic encounter (total support/total opportunity to support | 0.003±0.001 |
*Based on a hypothetical dyad of individual A and B, the baseline asymmetry in the distribution of grooming was calculated using the following equation: (grooming received by individual A − grooming received by individual B)/(grooming received by individual A + grooming received by individual B).
Based on a hypothetical dyad of individual A and B, the ‘opportunity to support’ was defined as the number of times individual A received aggression when individual B was in the group and potentially able to offer support to individual A.
Varimax rotated component matrix of the principal component analysis run on the seven variables measuring relationship quality (using scores per dyad).
| Component | |||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| (Value) | (Compatibility) | (Security) | |
| Grooming |
| .135 | −.007 |
| Proximity |
| −.108 | .146 |
| Grooming solicitations |
| −.130 | −.172 |
| Agonistic support | .017 |
| .069 |
| Tolerance | .459 |
| −.082 |
| Aggression | .205 |
| .001 |
| Grooming asymmetry | −.015 | .031 |
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Variables with high loadings (i.e. ≥0.5 or ≤−0.5; [40]) are in bold.
Figure 1Social network graphs of the two study groups.
Nodes represent individual group members (circles = adult females, squares = adult males, diamonds = sub-adult males). The thickness of the inter-connecting lines represents the tie-strength of principal component scores (i.e. value, compatibility and security) shared between dyads.
Figure 2Histogram showing the mean relationship quality (PCA component scores) of female-female, male-male and female-male dyads.
Varimax rotated component matrix of the principal component analysis run on the ten variables measuring relationship quality (using scores per individual).
| Component | ||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| Grooming given | .354 | .348 | .425 | .161 |
| Grooming received |
| .215 | .074 | .079 |
| Aggression given |
| −.155 | −.016 | −.150 |
| Aggression received | −.217 |
| −.172 | −.049 |
| Grooming solicitations given |
| .303 | −.013 | .038 |
| Grooming solicitations received | .220 |
| .144 | .124 |
| Agonistic support given | −.042 | −.044 | −.022 |
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| Agonistic support received | −.101 | −.068 |
| −.047 |
| Approach given | .164 |
| −.016 | −.038 |
| Approach received | .210 |
| .341 | −.107 |
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Variables with high loadings (i.e. ≥0.5 or ≤−0.5; [40]) are in bold.