Doctoral Dissertation Research: Female Counterstrategies to Male Aggression Among Primates

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This study focuses on the interacting male and female reproductive strategies of hamadryas baboons, a nonhuman primate with a unique and complex multilevel social system in which males transfer females between social units. The hamadryas social system may have more parallels to humans of any nonhuman primate, thus this study has great potential to enhance our understanding of human social evolution. In addition, this study will provide empirical data from wild animals to improve captive animal management in zoological parks in the USA and may also inform human obstetrics and gynecology. The project will support researcher training, conservation awareness, prevention of human-wildlife conflict, and improvement of snake-bite treatment options in areas surrounding the research site. Hamadryas takeovers involve substantial male aggression; they lead to delayed reproduction in females as well as higher rates of infanticide and infant mortality in general. Using observational behavioral data and endocrine measures from fecal hormone samples collected from wild hamadryas baboon females at Filoha, Ethiopia, the investigators will study female strategies that may function to counteract this coercion and its implications. For example, lactating females may display false signals of sexual receptivity to males post-takeover, thereby preventing the loss of a dependent infant. In addition, pregnant females may use a strategy of pregnancy termination post-takeover, thus mitigating the eventual loss of investment in offspring. This project would be the first to provide hormonal evidence of deceptive swellings in any primate species, as well as the first to provide hormonal evidence for pregnancy failure in hamadryas baboons. More broadly, the results of this study will fill gaps in the theoretical scientific literature on sexual selection, sexual conflict, and the co-evolution of male and female reproductive strategies.