Early life adversity has long-term effects on sociality and interaction style in female baboons

Abstract

Social bonds enhance fitness in many group-living animals, generating interest in the processes that create individual variation in sociality. Previous work on female baboons shows that early life adversity and temperament both influence social connectedness in adulthood. Early life adversity might shape sociality by reducing ability to invest in social relationships or through effects on attractiveness as a social partner. We examine how females’ early life adversity predicts sociality and temperament in wild olive baboons, and evaluate whether temperament mediates the relationship between early life adversity and sociality. We use behavioural data on 31 females to quantify sociality. We measure interaction style as the tendency to produce grunts (signals of benign intent) in contexts in which the vocalization does not produce immediate benefits to the actor. Early life adversity was negatively correlated with overall sociality, but was a stronger predictor of social behaviours received than behaviours initiated. Females who experienced less early life adversity had more benign interaction styles and benign interaction styles were associated with receiving more social behaviours. Interaction style may partially mediate the association between early life adversity and sociality. These analyses add to our growing understanding of the processes connecting early life experiences to adult sociality.

Early life adversity has sex-dependent effects on survival across the lifespan in rhesus macaques

“…The survival effects of some forms of early life adversity were sex-dependent. Studies of early life adversity in long-lived animals have typically only been assessed in one sex, the non-dispersing sex (e.g., Gicquel et al, 2022;Patterson et al, 2022;Tung et al, 2016), but studies that have examined males and females produced mixed results.…”

“…The survival effects of some forms of early life adversity were sex-dependent. Studies of early life adversity in long-lived animals have typically only been assessed in one sex, the non-dispersing sex (e.g., Gicquel et al, 2022; Patterson et al, 2022; Tung et al, 2016), but studies that have examined males and females produced mixed results. While male red deer are more negatively impacted by maternal death than female deer (Andres et al, 2013), there do not appear to be any sex-based differences in susceptibility to the survival costs of cumulative early life adversity in gorillas (Morrison et al, 2023), though males and females might vary in their responses to specific types of adversity.…”

Early life adversity and adult social relationships have independent effects on survival in a wild primate

“…Furthermore, the social determinants of health in many social mammal species resemble those described in humans, making wild animal models a useful tool for dissecting the relationships among early life adversity, adult social behavior, and life span. For example, in several nonhuman mammals, early life adversity is linked to low adult social status or weak adult social relationships (27)(28)(29)(30). Similarly, low social status or weak social relationships are associated with higher mortality rates in a range of social mammal species (12).…”

Early life adversity and adult social relationships have independent effects on survival in a wild animal model of aging

“…Further, the social determinants of health in many social mammal species resemble those described in humans, making wild animal models a useful tool for dissecting the relationships among early life adversity, adult social behavior, and lifespan. For example, in several nonhuman mammals, early life adversity is linked to low adult social status or weak adult social relationships (26)(27)(28)(29). Similarly, low social status or weak social relationships are associated with higher mortality rates in a range of social mammal species (9).…”