Whatisn'tsocial tolerance?The past, present, and possible future of an overused term in the field of primatology

Abstract

In the past four decades, the term social tolerance has been utilized to describe, explain, and predict many different aspects of primates' sociality and has been measured with a large range of traits and behaviors. To date, however, there has been little discussion on whether these different phenomena all reflect one and the same construct. This paper opens the discussion by presenting the historical development of the term social tolerance and a structured overview of its current, overextended use. We argue that social tolerance has developed to describe two distinct concepts: social tolerance as the social structure of a group and social tolerance as the dyadic or group-level manifestation of tolerant behaviors. We highlight how these two concepts are based on conflicting theoretical understandings and practical assessments.In conclusion, we present suggestions for future research on primate social tolerance, which will allow for a more systematic and comparable investigation of primate sociality.

Weak, but not strong, ties support coalition formation among wild female chimpanzees

“…These weak social bonds may be sufficient to support cooperation in specific contexts, such as when individuals have mutual interests. Establishing weak ties may help dyads overcome the costs of associating often, such as increased exposure to feeding competition [59,60], allowing a dyad to more frequently capitalize on chances for cooperation [61,62].…”

Is this worth the trouble? Strategic conflict management in Tonkean macaques

“…However, this analysis revealed that the association between β rank and the monkeys own rank was more pronounced in male than in female subjects ( Figure 5 C, Spearman correlation, males N = 15, R = 0.85, p < 0.001; females, N = 11, R = 0.63, p = 0.044; Tables S1 and S2 ). Another main factor that should influence individual conflict management strategy is their level of social tolerance; 27 therefore, the residuals of the regression depicted in Figure 5 C may be considered as an exploratory metric of social tolerance ( Figure S3 ).…”

Natural disaster alters the adaptive benefits of sociality in a primate

“…individuals did not need to have data collected both before and after Maria to be considered, as in ( 16 )). We focused our analyses on social tolerance, operationalized as the propensity to be in close proximity to conspecifics (i.e., within 2m of another adult monkey ( 17 )), but see Figure S2 for results on grooming and aggressive interactions.…”

“…A total of 790 unique adult individuals with behavioral data before and/or after Hurricane Maria were included in this analysis. We focused our analyses on relationships whereby partners spent time in close proximity to one another (i.e., within 2m 22 ). Whether or not pairs of individuals tolerate being close to each other is an active choice [23][24][25] which is repeatable and indicates relationships between conspecifics 26 , such that proximity is widely used to quantify social structure in primates [27][28][29][30] .…”