Cheating monkeys undermine group strength in enemy territory

Margaret C. Crofoot · Ian C. Gilby

100 citations0/0 files storedProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Primate Behavior and Ecology Animal Behavior and Reproduction Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation

Abstract

In many social animals, group-mates cooperate to defend their range against intrusion by neighboring groups. Because group size tends to be highly variable, such conflicts are often asymmetric. Although numerical superiority is assumed to provide a competitive advantage, small groups can generally defend their ranges, even when greatly outnumbered. The prevailing explanation for this puzzling phenomenon is that individuals in relatively large groups experience a greater temptation to flee from conflicts, in effect leveling the balance of power. Using playback experiments simulating territorial intrusions by wild capuchin monkey (Cebus capucinus) groups, we show that such a collective action problem does indeed undermine the competitive ability of large groups. Focal capuchins were more likely to run away from territorial intrusions when their group had a numeric advantage; each one-individual increase in relative group size raised the odds of flight by 25%. However, interaction location had a more important impact on individuals' reactions, creating a strong home-field advantage. After controlling for relative group size, the odds that a focal animal fled were 91% lower in experiments that occurred in the center compared with on the edge of its group's range, whereas the odds that it rushed toward the speaker were more than sixfold higher. These location-dependent patterns of defection and cooperation create a competitive advantage for residents over intruders across a wide range of relative group sizes, which may stabilize range boundaries and provide a general explanation for how groups of widely divergent sizes can coexist, even in the face of intense intergroup competition.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 100 citations exist upstream.

References

1965The Logic of Collective Action 1966The Logic of Collective Action.1986The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior 1980An Ecological Model of Female-Bonded Primate Groups 1976The logic of asymmetric contests 2003The evolution of altruistic punishment 1997The evolution of female social relationships in nonhuman primates 1983Why Are Diurnal Primates Living in Groups?

Cited by

2014The evolutionary interplay of intergroup conflict and altruism in humans: a review of parochial altruism theory and prospects for its extension 2013The collective action problem in primate territory economics 2017Group augmentation, collective action, and territorial boundary patrols by male chimpanzees 2015Collective action and the intensity of between-group competition in nonhuman primates 2016Female monkeys use both the carrot and the stick to promote male participation in intergroup fights 2014Drivers of home range characteristics across spatiotemporal scales in a Neotropical primate, Cebus capucinus

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.