Abstract
A growing body of evidence suggests that social bonds have adaptive value for animals that live in social groups. Although these findings suggest that natural selection may favor the ability to cultivate and sustain social bonds, we know very little about the factors that influence the quality or stability of social bonds. Here, we draw on data derived from a 16-year study of baboons living in seven different social groups in the Amboseli basin of Kenya to evaluate the quality and stability of social bonds among females. Our results extend previous analyses, which demonstrate that females form the strongest bonds with close maternal and paternal kin, age mates (who may be paternal kin), and females who occupy similar ranks but are not maternal relatives. Here we show that the same factors influence the quality and strength of social bonds. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the quality of social bonds directly affects their stability.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Office of the President of Kenya and the Kenya Wildlife Service for permission to work in Amboseli. The staff of Amboseli National Park provided valuable cooperation. The members of the pastoralist communities of Amboseli and Longido and the Institute for Primate Research in Nairobi provided local sponsorship. We thank R.S. Mututua, S.N. Sayialel, and J.K. Warutere for their expert assistance in data collection, and S. Combes and D. Onderdonk for database support. This article was greatly improved by the comments of Louise Barrett, Bernard Chapais, Dorothy Cheney, Robert Seyfarth, and Anja Widdig. This project was supported by grants to J.B.S. from the National Geographic Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the UCLA Academic Senate, and the National Science Foundation (BCS-0003245); by grants to J.A. by the Chicago Zoological Society and the National Science Foundation (IBN-9985910 and its predecessors); and by a National Science Foundation grant to S.C.A. (IBN-0322613). This research protocol was approved by the Chancellor’s Animal Research Committee of the Office of the Protection of Research Subjects at the University of California, Los Angeles (ARC no. 99-075-02). The final drafts of this article were prepared when J.B.S. was visiting the Large Animal Research Group in the Department of Zoology and the Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge. She thanks her hosts for their hospitality and fellowship.
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Silk, J.B., Alberts, S.C. & Altmann, J. Social relationships among adult female baboons (Papio cynocephalus) II. Variation in the quality and stability of social bonds. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 61, 197–204 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-006-0250-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-006-0250-9