On the road again: competitive effects and condition-dependent dispersal in male baboons
Section snippets
Methods
We extracted 7 years' monthly demographic data (1998–2004) from a continuous census of one chacma baboon study troop (VT) at the De Hoop Nature Reserve (20°24′E, 34°27′S), South Africa. While the troop has been observed since 1997 and has ranged in size between 31 and 50 animals, epidemic disease killed all the adult males in early 1998, allowing us to monitor the dispersal patterns of all subsequent immigrants (Barrett & Henzi 1998). For a description of the study site see Barrett et al. (2004)
Results
Of all high-quality males 41.2% (7/17) attained alpha status, compared with no (0/18) low-quality males. Consequently, the dichotomous classification we adopted appeared to reflect accurately variance in the competitive ability of males seen to move during the study.
Discussion
Our findings indicate that variance in competitive ability underpins differentiation in male dispersal patterns. In general, patterns of male transfer were significantly associated with two independent measures of a troop's demography. When patterns of movement were broken down by categories of physical condition, each of these measures reflected the movement of a separate and specific class: better-condition males, presumed to be in their prime, responded to the absolute number of females
Acknowledgments
We thank Cape Nature for permission to work at De Hoop. We are also grateful to all the volunteers and graduate students who contributed to the long-term data set. In addition, we thank Paul Bessell for assistance with the construction of graphs in R. P.M.R.C. was supported by a Wingate scholarship and a bursary from the University of Bolton. The De Hoop Baboon Project has been funded by NRF awards to S.P.H., an NRF postdoctoral fellowship and Leverhulme Research fellowship to L.B. and NSERC
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