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Social affiliation matters: both same-sex and opposite-sex relationships predict survival in wild female baboons

Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Social integration and support can have profound effects on human survival. The extent of this phenomenon in non-human animals is largely unknown, but such knowledge is important to understanding the evolution of both lifespan and sociality. Here, we report evidence that levels of affiliative social behaviour (i.e. 'social connectedness') with both same-sex and opposite-sex conspecifics predict adult survival in wild female baboons. In the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya, adult female baboons that were socially connected to either adult males or adult females lived longer than females who were socially isolated from both sexes--females with strong connectedness to individuals of both sexes lived the longest. Female social connectedness to males was predicted by high dominance rank, indicating that males are a limited resource for females, and females compete for access to male social partners. To date, only a handful of animal studies have found that social relationships may affect survival. This study extends those findings by examining relationships to both sexes in by far the largest dataset yet examined for any animal. Our results support the idea that social effects on survival are evolutionarily conserved in social mammals.
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.1261
Institutions: University of Notre Dame, Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya, Duke University, University of Nairobi, Princeton University
Language: English
Field: Psychology
Open Access status: bronze
Funders: National Science Foundation, Princeton University, Max-Planck-Institut für demografische Forschung, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Awards: Relationship Among Demographic, Social and Genetic Structure, G2474178792, G3068487439, Collaborative Research: Relationship Among Demographic, Social and Genetic Structure, Princeton Center for the Demography and Economics of Aging, Demography of Sex Differences in Health and Survival, Collaborative Research: Relationship Among Demographic, Social and Genetic Structure, Collaborative Research: Life in a Changing Environment, LTREB: Long-term behavioral and genetic analyses of a wild primate population, Mechanisms and Consequences of Social Connectedness in a Wild Primate Population, G7287600090, Collaborative Research: Genes, environment and gene expression in a wild primate population, Collaborative Research: Genes, environment and gene expression in a wild primate population, Collaborative Research: Life in a Changing Environment, Infrastructure for the Office of Population Research, CAREER: Understanding socially-structured transmission of infectious agents in wild baboons
OpenAlex ID: W2116238305
FWCI: 27.65
Cites: 81
Cited by: 290
Related to: 10