Abstract
Establishing the order of a dominance hierarchy among female chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) is complicated by the fact that they often forage solitarily, and aggressive interactions between them occur infrequently. Authors of previous studies have typically ranked females via the direction of submissive pant-grunts and the outcome of agonistic interactions. Given that higher rank correlates with higher reproductive success in female chimpanzees, assessing rank is important but may be limited by sparsely populated dominance matrices. I tested the hypothesis that rank predicts the direction of female approaches. There is a significant relationship among Gombe females between the frequency with which a female was approached and her dominance rank. Dominant females approached other females less often than they were approached. Though approached frequencies failed to meet the criteria for formal rank indicators, they may be useful as real indicators of subordination. Because approach interactions occur far more frequently than pant-grunts, they may be useful in assigning categorical rank when traditional dominance metrics are limited.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Tanzania National Parks, the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, and the Tanzanian Council for Science and Technology for granting me permission to work in Gombe National Park. I also thank the Gombe Stream Research Center for maintaining long-term data collection and the Jane Goodall Institute for providing field assistants (S. Athumani and M. Msafiri) for this study. Finally, I thank I. Gilby, E. Lonsdorf, A. Pusey, and 2 reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. A grant from Milton Harris, a Dayton-Wilkie Fellowship, the Jane Goodall Institute, and the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota funded the work.
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Murray, C.M. Method for Assigning Categorical Rank in Female Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii via the Frequency of Approaches. Int J Primatol 28, 853–864 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-007-9164-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-007-9164-2