Data from: Cooperative personalities and social niche specialisation in female meerkats
| Main Authors: | Carter, Alecia J., English, Sinead, Clutton-Brock, Tim H. |
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| Format: | info dataset |
| Terbitan: |
, 2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
https://zenodo.org/record/4932497 |
Daftar Isi:
- The social niche specialization hypothesis predicts that group-living animals should specialize in particular social roles to avoid social conflict, resulting in alternative life-history strategies for different roles. Social niche specialization, coupled with role-specific life-history trade-offs, should thus generate between-individual differences in behaviour that persist through time, or distinct personalities, as individuals specialize in particular nonoverlapping social roles. We tested for support for the social niche specialization hypothesis in cooperative personality traits in wild female meerkats (Suricata suricatta) that compete for access to dominant social roles. As cooperation is costly and dominance is acquired by heavier females, we predicted that females that ultimately acquired dominant roles would show noncooperative personality types early in life and before and after role acquisition. Although we found large individual differences in repeatable cooperative behaviours, there was no indication that individuals that ultimately acquired dominance differed from unsuccessful individuals in their cooperative behaviour. Early-life behaviour did not predict social role acquisition later in life, nor was cooperative behaviour before and after role acquisition correlated in the same individuals. We suggest that female meerkats do not show social niche specialization resulting in cooperative personalities, but that they exhibit an adaptive response in personality at role acquisition.
- babysitting dataindivdiualSessions: number of sessions individual babysat for the litter, totalGroupSessions: number of sessions the group babysat for that litter, lnAge: natural log of the individual's age in days, condition: relative mass of the individual for its age, groupSize: the average group size of the group for the babysitting period, individualID: code for individual, group: code for group, litter: code for babysat litter, dominanceStatus: whether the individual was dominant during the babysitting period, everDominant: whether the individual became dominant in its lifetimebsData.txtprovisioning dataindivdiualFeeds: number of pup times individual fed to the litter, totalGroupFeeds: number of times the group fed to that litter, lnAge: natural log of the individual's age in days, condition: relative mass of the individual for its age, groupSize: the average group size of the group for the provisioning period, totalObservationTime: total time the group was observed for the provisioning period, individualID: code for individual, group: code for group, litter: code for litter, dominanceStatus: whether the individual was dominant during the babysitting period, everDominant: whether the individual became dominant in its lifetimefyData.txtguarding dataindividualBouts: number of times the individual went on raised guard during the month, totalGroupBouts: total number of times any group member went on raised guard during the month, lnAge: the natural log of the individuals age, condition: the relative mass of the individual for its age, groupSize: the average group size of the group for the month, proportionPregnant: the proportion of the month the individual was pregnant, totalObservationTime: the total time the group was observed for that month, individualID: code for the individual, group: code for the group, monthYear: code for the month within the year, dominanceStatus: the proportion of days an individual was dominant during the month, everDominant: whether the individual ever became dominant within its lifetimergData.txt