Factors affecting individual participation in group-level aggression among non-human primates

Kitchen, Dawn M.; Beehner, Jacinta C.

doi:10.1163/156853907782512074

Cited by 173 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 105 publications

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“…If the probability of participation is independent of group size, then individuals should be more willing to participate in intergroup conflicts when they outnumber their opponents (26) and their risk of injury is accordingly low (27). Indeed, when faced with simulated incursions in the center of their range, focal animals tended to be more likely to move to confront the intruders when their group had a numeric advantage (X 2 1 = 3.53, P = 0.06; Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Cheating monkeys undermine group strength in enemy territory

Crofoot

Gilby

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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In many social animals, group-mates cooperate to defend their range against intrusion by neighboring groups. Because group size tends to be highly variable, such conflicts are often asymmetric. Although numerical superiority is assumed to provide a competitive advantage, small groups can generally defend their ranges, even when greatly outnumbered. The prevailing explanation for this puzzling phenomenon is that individuals in relatively large groups experience a greater temptation to flee from conflicts, in effect leveling the balance of power. Using playback experiments simulating territorial intrusions by wild capuchin monkey (Cebus capucinus) groups, we show that such a collective action problem does indeed undermine the competitive ability of large groups. Focal capuchins were more likely to run away from territorial intrusions when their group had a numeric advantage; each one-individual increase in relative group size raised the odds of flight by 25%. However, interaction location had a more important impact on individuals' reactions, creating a strong home-field advantage. After controlling for relative group size, the odds that a focal animal fled were 91% lower in experiments that occurred in the center compared with on the edge of its group's range, whereas the odds that it rushed toward the speaker were more than sixfold higher. These location-dependent patterns of defection and cooperation create a competitive advantage for residents over intruders across a wide range of relative group sizes, which may stabilize range boundaries and provide a general explanation for how groups of widely divergent sizes can coexist, even in the face of intense intergroup competition.intergroup aggression | territoriality | resource holding potential |

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Cheating monkeys undermine group strength in enemy territory

Crofoot

Gilby

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…In meerkats, dominant males respond more strongly to intruder scent marks [157]. High-rank chacma baboon males are more likely than low-rank males to join inter-group loud call displays [16].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The important role of the CAP in undermining within-group cooperation in between-group territorial conflicts is well recognized by evolutionary primatologists [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] as well as by some other behavioural biologists [20][21][22][23].…”

Section: (A) Review Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective action problem in heterogeneous groups

Gavrilets

2015

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

114

133

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One contribution of 13 to a theme issue 'Solving the puzzle of collective action through inter-individual differences: evidence from primates and humans'. I review the theoretical and experimental literature on the collective action problem in groups whose members differ in various characteristics affecting individual costs, benefits and preferences in collective actions. I focus on evolutionary models that predict how individual efforts and fitnesses, group efforts and the amount of produced collective goods depend on the group's size and heterogeneity, as well as on the benefit and cost functions and parameters. I consider collective actions that aim to overcome the challenges from nature or win competition with neighbouring groups of co-specifics. I show that the largest contributors towards production of collective goods will typically be group members with the highest stake in it or for whom the effort is least costly, or those who have the largest capability or initial endowment. Under some conditions, such group members end up with smaller net pay-offs than the rest of the group. That is, they effectively behave as altruists. With weak nonlinearity in benefit and cost functions, the group effort typically decreases with group size and increases with within-group heterogeneity. With strong nonlinearity in benefit and cost functions, these patterns are reversed. I discuss the implications of theoretical results for animal behaviour, human origins and psychology.

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“…In all six species, the majority of coalitions involved only two individuals (range: 58-100%; [26]). In some cases, intergroup coalitions involve all group members, but in most cases, they are limited to members of a single sex or subset of the group [27]. For example, in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) all group members participate in intergroup encounters, but the strength of their responses vary by age and sex [28].…”

Section: Form Scope and Scale Of Altruism In Non-human Primatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of altruistic social preferences in human groups

Silk

House

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits'. In this paper, we consider three hypotheses to account for the evolution of the extraordinary capacity for large-scale cooperation and altruistic social preferences within human societies. One hypothesis is that human cooperation is built on the same evolutionary foundations as cooperation in other animal societies, and that fundamental elements of the social preferences that shape our species' cooperative behaviour are also shared with other closely related primates. Another hypothesis is that selective pressures favouring cooperative breeding have shaped the capacity for cooperation and the development of social preferences, and produced a common set of behavioural dispositions and social preferences in cooperatively breeding primates and humans. The third hypothesis is that humans have evolved derived capacities for collaboration, group-level cooperation and altruistic social preferences that are linked to our capacity for culture. We draw on naturalistic data to assess differences in the form, scope and scale of cooperation between humans and other primates, experimental data to evaluate the nature of social preferences across primate species, and comparative analyses to evaluate the evolutionary origins of cooperative breeding and related forms of behaviour.

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Factors affecting individual participation in group-level aggression among non-human primates

Cited by 173 publications

References 105 publications

Cheating monkeys undermine group strength in enemy territory

Cheating monkeys undermine group strength in enemy territory

Collective action problem in heterogeneous groups

The evolution of altruistic social preferences in human groups

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