@article{34a520e4075c43978968ebefbe0ab08b,
title = "Stability of partner choice among female baboons",
abstract = "In a wide range of taxa, including baboons, close social bonds seem to help animals cope with stress and enhance long-term reproductive success and longevity. Current evidence suggests that female baboons may benefit from establishing and maintaining highly individuated relationships with a relatively small number of partners. Here, we extend previous work on the stability of female baboons' social relationships in three different ways. First, we assess the stability of females' social relationships in two distinct and geographically distant sites using the same method. Second, we conduct simulations to determine whether females' social relationships were more stable than expected by chance. Third, we examine demographic sources of variance in the stability of close social bonds. At both sites, females' relationships with their most preferred partners were significantly more stable than expected by chance. In contrast, their relationships with less preferred partners were more ephemeral, often changing from year to year. While nearly all females experienced some change in their top partners across time, many maintained relationships with top partners for several years. Females that lived in smaller groups and had more close kin available had more stable social relationships than those that lived in larger groups and had fewer close kin available.",
keywords = "Baboon, Bond stability, Female bond, Papio hamadryas ursinus, Reproductive success, Stress",
author = "Silk, {Joan B.} and Alberts, {Susan C.} and Jeanne Altmann and Cheney, {Dorothy L.} and Seyfarth, {Robert M.}",
note = "Funding Information: R.M.S. and D.L.C. thank the Office of the President and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks of the Republic of Botswana for the permission to conduct research in the Moremi Reserve. A. Mokopi, M. Mokopi, M. Heesen, C. Shaw, W. Smith and E. Wikberg provided valuable help with data collection and logistics in the field. J. Fischer, S. Johnson, D. Kitchen, R. Palombit and D. Rendall contributed to the long-term records. Field research was supported by grants from the National Geographic Foundation, the Research Foundation of the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the National Institutes of Health (HD-29433; MH62249). R.M.S., D.L.C. and J.B.S. thank J. Beehner, T. Bergman, C. Crockford, A. Engh, L. Mosovitz and R. Wittig for access to behavioural data collected between 2001 and 2007. J.B.S. thanks her coauthors for the opportunity to work in Moremi and Amboseli and to analyse the long-term data. Her fieldwork in Moremi was partially funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-9213586), and her work in Amboseli was funded by the LSB Leakey Foundation , the National Geographic Society and the US National Science Foundation ( BCS-0003245 ). Funding Information: S.C.A. and J.A. thank the Office of the President of Kenya and the Kenya Wildlife Service for permission to work in Amboseli. The staff of Amboseli National Park provided valuable cooperation. The members of the pastoralist communities of Amboseli and Longido and the Institute for Primate Research in Nairobi provided local sponsorship. We thank R. S. Mututua, S. N. Sayialel and J. K. Warutere for their expert assistance in data collection in Amboseli. We are grateful to the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Aging for financial support of the Amboseli Baboon Project from several grants over the years ( NIA R01AG034513-01 and P01-AG031719 , and NSF IBN-9985910 , IBN-0322613 , BCS-0323553 , IOS 0919200 ). ",
year = "2012",
month = jun,
doi = "10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.03.028",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "83",
pages = "1511--1518",
journal = "Animal Behaviour",
issn = "0003-3472",
publisher = "Academic Press Inc.",
number = "6",
}