title: Rank-dependent grooming patterns and cortisol alleviation in Barbary macaques.
abstract: Flexibly adapting social behavior to social and environmental challenges helps to alleviate glucocorticoid (GC) levels, which may have positive fitness implications for an individual. For primates, the predominant social behavior is grooming. Giving grooming to others is particularly efficient in terms of GC mitigation. However, grooming is confined by certain limitations such as time constraints or restricted access to other group members. For instance, dominance hierarchies may impact grooming partner availability in primate societies. Consequently specific grooming patterns emerge. In despotic species focusing grooming activity on preferred social partners significantly ameliorates GC levels in females of all ranks. In this study we investigated grooming patterns and GC management in Barbary macaques, a comparably relaxed species. We monitored changes in grooming behavior and cortisol (C) for females of different ranks. Our results show that the C-amelioration associated with different grooming patterns had a gradual connection with dominance hierarchy: while higher-ranking individuals showed lowest urinary C measures when they focused their grooming on selected partners within their social network, lower-ranking individuals expressed lowest C levels when dispersing their grooming activity evenly across their social partners. We argue that the relatively relaxed social style of Barbary macaque societies allows individuals to flexibly adapt grooming patterns, which is associated with rank-specific GC management.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, Austria.|Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Ruth S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Sonnweber
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, Austria.|Language Evolution & Computation Research Unit, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh 3, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ravignani
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Nina
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Stobbe
authors.affiliation: Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Gisela
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schiestl
authors.affiliation: Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, Austria.|Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wallner
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: W Tecumseh
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Fitch
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D005876:Gibraltar; D006120:Grooming; D006854:Hydrocortisone / Q000652:urine*; D008251:Macaca / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D012930:Social Dominance
chemical_list: D006854:Hydrocortisone
keywords: Barbary macaques; dominance hierarchies; glucocorticoides; relaxed social styles; urinary cortisol