Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

My students and I will use a long-term data base on vervet monkeys, and collect data from three chacma baboon populations in South Africa, to address two overarching issues: (i) the ability of long-lived social animals to remain integrated in a changeable social world such that, in the long-term, they maximise their reproductive success, and (ii) how their social adjustments are structured by the interaction of prevailing social and environmental conditions across space and over time. This research does not involve indigenous communities, societies or individuals. We have four short-term objectives. 1. To describe the extent to which individuals differ in their ability to adjust to changes in local circumstances. 2. To evaluate how animals integrate themselves into new social groups. 3. To determine whether individual social networks are responsive to predation risk, i.e. whether animals work adjust their associations with others in order to benefit from their vigilance, and whether this is more evident in habitats where visibility is lower. 4. To assess whether the ability of alpha male baboons to control the reproductive activity of females-argued to be a distinctive feature of chacma baboons-is, in fact, a consequence of topology and local visibility that allows males to monitor female interactions. We will make use of statistical modelling techniques-developed in our lab-that, by treating change over time as a continuous stream, allow us to detect change points in social behaviour and social networks more accurately. The research is relevant to animal behavioural ecology in the following respects. The focus on adjustment over time, and in response to differences in location, emphasises flexibility, rather than single social strategies, as the hallmark of successful adaptation and points to the need to understand how animals act to maximise their lifetime reproductive success. Finally, in a field where time and place are often considered to be control variables is the search for general explanations, there is value in understanding *how* local specificities (group size, demography, resource availability, terrain and visibility) shape the possibilities for animal action and social integration. We hope that our work, as evidenced by scientific publications and presentations, will make a strong case for our approach and lead to other researchers pursuing these themes. While these researchers will hopefully include Canadians, the analytical skills that our students acquire will also, as in the past, make them sought after, not only as academics, but also in other domains where critical thinking and analytical expertise are valued.