PubMed · 17059077
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2006. A program for ending disruptive behavior.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17059077/
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A recent study by Goran Arnqvist and Mark Kirkpatrick in the American Naturalist (165:S26-S37) suggested that female polyandry in birds is not driven by females because quantitative genetic approximations of selection demonstrated that indirect selection for female infidelity is weaker than natural selection against it. Instead, it was argued that extrapair copulations are the result of antagonistic selection on male behavior driving female coercion. While the approach and framework of the study were very good, the conclusions of the study were premature because a number of potential adaptive components of polyandry were unaccounted for, and several critical assumptions are unsupported by the current empirical data. Our understanding of extrapair paternity in birds, and perhaps polyandry in general, will be improved by a better empirical understanding of the direct benefits of fertility assurance and postcopulatory cryptic female choice and the relationship between polyandry and male investment. In addition, we need to develop a greater awareness of the limitations of trying to study behavior by proxy in the molecular laboratory. Together, these challenges and the framework recently presented should improve our understanding of the true function of extrapair paternity in birds.
Feeding-related agonism among wild female Taiwanese macaques was investigated in two study groups at ecologically diverse sites (Fu-shan and Ken-ting) to determine whether contest-feeding competition was present in these groups. Females that contest for food within a primate group are hypothesized to form dominance hierarchies and tend to be philopatric. In this study we tested 1) whether Taiwanese macaque females show higher agonism in a feeding context, 2) whether they exhibit stronger agonism over higher-quality foods, and 3) whether higher agonism rates occur in smaller food patches. Female Taiwanese macaques at both study sites showed similar agonism rates in a feeding context (0.30 events/hr). They exhibited higher agonism rates inside food patches than outside food patches in the spring. Higher agonism rates occurred during seasons of higher fruit availability, and a lower agonism rate occurred in winter when the macaques switched to feeding on fallback foods. Females in the Fu-shan group exhibited higher proportions of aggressive interactions over higher-quality foods, such as animal matter and the reproductive parts of plants. In the Ken-ting group, 95.8% of feeding-related agonistic interactions among females occurred over fruits. Agonistic interactions that occurred in small food patches tended to result in the agonism recipient leaving the food patch. We conclude that female Taiwanese macaques show contest feeding competition in certain contexts. The patterns we observed have also been documented in other primate species in which females are philopatric and form linear dominance hierarchies.
Food abundance and distribution have played a central role in the conceptual theory of primate socioecology [Janson, Behaviour 105:53-76, 1988; Isbell, Behavioral Ecology 2:143-155, 1991; Sterck et al., Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 41:291-309, 1997; van Schaik, In: Standen V, Foley RA, editors, Comparative Socioecology. Oxford: Blackwell. p 195-218, 1989]. This theory predicts that agonistic ("contest") competition should occur when food is distributed in discrete, defensible patches; in contrast, when food sources are distributed uniformly or randomly, non-agonistic ("scramble") competition is expected. Primatologists usually measure resource density and patchiness from a botanical perspective, ignoring the biology of the animal being studied. Such an approach may be irrelevant in terms of how animals view the dispersion of resources. Using a novel focal-tree method that measures resource availability on a scale that is both spatially and temporally relevant to the animal under investigation, we take a cost-benefit approach to predict the frequency of food-related agonism in white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus) from 11 ecological and social variables. We retained four variables in the regression model: two representing the opportunity for aggression (i.e., feeding bout length and the number of feeding adult females), and two representing opportunity costs (i.e., fruit abundance and the number of potential feeding sites in the focal tree). The results of this study indicate that the amount of food-related aggression in white-faced capuchins can be predicted by variables representing the costs and benefits of contesting a food resource.