Doctoral Dissertation Research: Contextual and physiological correlates of complex behavioral strategies in primates

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

Primates engage in a complex array of behavioral strategies during social interactions. This doctoral dissertation project will study the relative importance of friendly and aggressive behaviors and the broader contexts in which these behaviors occur during male-female interactions. The project will contribute to our understanding of the distribution of reproductive behaviors observed across the Primate Order. This project will contribute to the training of an undergraduate student in hormonal analysis techniques in the laboratory. The project will also contribute to conservation education programs and classroom connections between research site locations and the home institution. Olive baboons provide a unique opportunity to test several hypotheses addressing the expression of coercive versus "friendly" interactions with respect to mating. Because mating opportunities for males in this species are not strictly confined to the highest ranking individuals, both aggressive and friendly approaches occur, either by different males or even by the same males at different times, with different mates. However, the conditions influencing the relevant male and female mating decisions generating these patterns are currently unclear. Systematic behavioral and hormonal data will be collected from wild olive baboons to test whether two recognized aggressive tactics are effective male strategies in either the long-term or the short-term. Correspondingly, this research will evaluate whether males obtain mating opportunities through the contrasting strategy of friendly interaction to females, either as part of a long-term strategy of positive social affiliation or as a short-term tactic. This project also will record female injuries and non-invasively measure stress hormones to evaluate the physiological response and potential costs to females of male strategies. This primate system provides a useful model for testing general principles of how these ostensibly antithetical strategy sets interact co-evolutionarily. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.