Dataset Information

Rates of agonism among female primates: a cross-taxon perspective.

ABSTRACT: Agonism is common in group-living animals, shaping dominance relationships and ultimately impacting individual fitness. Rates of agonism vary considerably among taxa, however, and explaining this variation has been central in ecological models of female social relationships in primates. Early iterations of these models posited a link to diet, with more frequent agonism predicted in frugivorous species due to the presumed greater contestability of fruits relative to other food types. Although some more recent studies have suggested that dietary categories may be poor predictors of contest competition among primates, to date there have been no broad, cross-taxa comparisons of rates of female-female agonism in relation to diet. This study tests whether dietary variables do indeed predict rates of female agonism and further investigates the role of group size (i.e., number of competitors) and substrate use (i.e., degree of arboreality) on the frequency of agonism. Data from 44 wild, unprovisioned groups, including 3 strepsirhine species, 3 platyrrhines, 5 colobines, 10 cercopithecines, and 2 hominoids were analyzed using phylogenetically controlled and uncontrolled methods. Results indicate that diet does not predict agonistic rates, with trends actually being in the opposite direction than predicted for all taxa except cercopithecines. In contrast, agonistic rates are positively associated with group size and possibly degree of terrestriality. Competitor density and perhaps the risk of fighting, thus, appear more important than general diet in predicting agonism among female primates. We discuss the implications of these results for socio-ecological hypotheses.

SUBMITTER: Wheeler BC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3796709 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Rates of agonism among female primates: a cross-taxon perspective.

Wheeler Brandon C BC Scarry Clara J CJ Koenig Andreas A

Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology 20130821 6

Agonism is common in group-living animals, shaping dominance relationships and ultimately impacting individual fitness. Rates of agonism vary considerably among taxa, however, and explaining this variation has been central in ecological models of female social relationships in primates. Early iterations of these models posited a link to diet, with more frequent agonism predicted in frugivorous species due to the presumed greater contestability of fruits relative to other food types. Although som ...[more]

PMID: 24137045

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Project description:Large-scale phylogenies provide a valuable source to study background diversification rates and investigate if the rates have changed over time. Unfortunately most large-scale, dated phylogenies are sparsely sampled (fewer than 5% of the described species) and taxon sampling is not uniform. Instead, taxa are frequently sampled to obtain at least one representative per subgroup (e.g. family) and thus to maximize diversity (diversified sampling). So far, such complications have been ignored, potentially biasing the conclusions that have been reached. In this study I derive the likelihood of a birth-death process with non-constant (time-dependent) diversification rates and diversified taxon sampling. Using simulations I test if the true parameters and the sampling method can be recovered when the trees are small or medium sized (fewer than 200 taxa). The results show that the diversification rates can be inferred and the estimates are unbiased for large trees but are biased for small trees (fewer than 50 taxa). Furthermore, model selection by means of Akaike's Information Criterion favors the true model if the true rates differ sufficiently from alternative models (e.g. the birth-death model is recovered if the extinction rate is large and compared to a pure-birth model). Finally, I applied six different diversification rate models--ranging from a constant-rate pure birth process to a decreasing speciation rate birth-death process but excluding any rate shift models--on three large-scale empirical phylogenies (ants, mammals and snakes with respectively 149, 164 and 41 sampled species). All three phylogenies were constructed by diversified taxon sampling, as stated by the authors. However only the snake phylogeny supported diversified taxon sampling. Moreover, a parametric bootstrap test revealed that none of the tested models provided a good fit to the observed data. The model assumptions, such as homogeneous rates across species or no rate shifts, appear to be violated.

Dataset Information

Rates of agonism among female primates: a cross-taxon perspective.

Publications

Rates of agonism among female primates: a cross-taxon perspective.

Similar Datasets

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