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Title: Early life adversity has long-term effects on sociality and interaction style in female baboons
Social bonds enhance fitness in many group-living animals, generating interest in the processes that create individual variation in sociality. Previous work on female baboons shows that early life adversity and temperament both influence social connectedness in adulthood. Early life adversity might shape sociality by reducing ability to invest in social relationships or through effects on attractiveness as a social partner. We examine how females’ early life adversity predicts sociality and temperament in wild olive baboons, and evaluate whether temperament mediates the relationship between early life adversity and sociality. We use behavioural data on 31 females to quantify sociality. We measure interaction style as the tendency to produce grunts (signals of benign intent) in contexts in which the vocalization does not produce immediate benefits to the actor. Early life adversity was negatively correlated with overall sociality, but was a stronger predictor of social behaviours received than behaviours initiated. Females who experienced less early life adversity had more benign interaction styles and benign interaction styles were associated with receiving more social behaviours. Interaction style may partially mediate the association between early life adversity and sociality. These analyses add to our growing understanding of the processes connecting early life experiences to adult sociality.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1732172
PAR ID:
10482477
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume:
289
Issue:
1968
ISSN:
0962-8452
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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