Time constraints imposed by anthropogenic environments alter social behaviour in longtailed macaques

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.02.010

Animal Behaviour

Volume 150, April 2019, Pages 157-165

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.02.010 Get rights and content

Highlights

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We test the effect of human presence on social interaction in a social mammal.
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Time constraints imposed by humans reduce social interactions with conspecifics.
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Grooming frequency decreases with increased time spent monitoring human activity.
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Signs of stress may lead to more social interactions, a potential coping mechanism.

Humans and their associated anthropogenic factors may strongly affect the demographics, activity and fragmentation of wild animal populations. Yet, the degree and nature of such impact on indicators of animals' social relationships remain largely under-investigated, despite the well-documented importance of strong social ties for an individual's health and fitness. Here, we examined whether interactions with humans may affect core aspects of social life in a primate species, by constraining the time available for individuals to engage in social interactions. Specifically, we predicted that individuals who spend more time monitoring or interacting with humans would reduce their time socializing with conspecifics (i.e. the time constraints hypothesis). Alternatively, human presence may result in increased levels of stress, leading to an increase in social behaviours that serve as a coping mechanism (i.e. the social stress hypothesis). We collected data between September 2016 and September 2017 on four groups of longtailed macaques, Macaca fascicularis, in Malaysia at two sites with differing levels of human impact. In support of the time constraints hypothesis, we found that at the site with moderate human impact, monkeys who monitored human activity more frequently engaged less often in grooming. In contrast, at the site with high human impact, we found evidence supporting the social stress hypothesis, as indicators of stress were positively associated with social interactions, although we could not link them to the presence of humans. Our results suggest that the nature of human impact on macaques' social behaviour is dependent upon the intensity of human activity and interaction with the macaques. These findings therefore provide insights into how humans may influence individual fitness and group social structure in animals living in an anthropogenic environment. More broadly, our results may lead to a better understanding of animal behaviour in anthropogenic environments, implementing conservation and population management strategies and mitigating human–wildlife conflict.

Section snippets

Study Subjects and Study Site

Research protocols were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of California (no. 20593), Davis, and met the legal requirements of Malaysia.

We studied four groups of wild longtailed macaques in anthropogenic environments around Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from September 2016 until September 2017. Two groups (Pirate's and Lip's group) were studied at Batu Caves (hereafter BC), a Hindu temple and major tourist attraction in Malaysia (3°14′14″N, 101°41′02″E). The

Site-specific Differences

Monitoring rates between sites differed significantly, with higher rates in BC than in TP (w = 2958, N_BC = 56, N_TP = 53, P < 0.001; Fig. 2a). Similarly, individuals at BC engaged in more human–macaque events (w = −2919, N = 109, P < 0.001; Fig. 2b) and in less grooming than individuals in TP (w = 81, N = 109, P < 0.001; median: TP = 0.079; BC = 0.008). In addition, both outcome variables (grooming frequency and groom diversity) were differentially distributed between sites (see Supplementary Material). These findings

Discussion

The present study takes an important step forward in understanding the impact of humans on social behaviours in animals living in an anthropogenic environment. In this study, we tested two hypothetical frameworks through which overall human activity and/or interactions with humans may affect social behaviour of nonhuman primates in contrasting ways. Our results provide support for the time constraints hypothesis and partial support for the social stress hypothesis. Evidence from TP, where the

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to the Economic Planning Unit Malaysia, the Forestry Department of Peninsular Malaysia, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks Peninsular Malaysia and Tourism Selangor for giving us the permission to conduct this research. We thank our research assistants Camille Luccisano, Eduardo Saczek, Silvia La Gala, Nur Atiqua Tahir, Shelby Samartino and Rachael Hume for their help in collecting data. We also thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on

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