Female vervet monkeys fine-tune decisions on tolerance versus conflict in a communication network.

ABSTRACT: Group living promotes opportunities for both cooperation and competition. Selection on the ability to cope with such opposing social opportunities has been proposed as a driving force in the evolution of large brains in primates and other social species. However, we still know little about the degree of complexity involved in such social strategies. Here, we report advanced social strategies in wild vervet monkeys. Building on recent experimental evidence that subordinate females trade grooming for tolerance from higher-ranking individuals during foraging activities, we show that the audience composition strongly affects this trade. First, tolerance was lower if the audience contained individuals that outranked the subordinate partner, independently of audience size and kinship relationshi

SUBMITTER: Borgeaud C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5719174 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature