Behavioral Management of Deleterious Aggression in Rhesus Macaques

描述（由申请人提供）：NIH/NCRR资助的国家灵长类动物研究中心的繁殖计划通常在大型户外围栏中以多雌多雄的社会群体饲养恒河猴。该育种计划旨在开发具有成本效益的方法来提高繁殖能力，以增加可用于研究的猴子数量，并为它们的心理健康提供适当的社会化。尽管这些户外畜栏模拟了自然的社会和环境特征，但管理群居猕猴最困难的问题之一是它们有害的攻击倾向。从管理的角度来看，这种攻击行为无疑是在群体饲养的恒河猴中观察到的最成问题的行为，它很容易升级到导致严重的身体创伤、生殖能力下降和心理健康下降的程度。三年多来，我们一直在进行一项由美国国立卫生研究院（nih）资助的R24研究，使用社会网络分析来检查影响群体饲养的恒河猴有害攻击和伤人率的内部（如群体组成、个性和气质）和外部（如管理因素）。我们的研究提供了强有力的证据，证明个体、家庭和群体特征，如气质、家庭结构和性别比例，相互作用影响网络结构，如服从、和解、梳理和冲突干预模式，这些都表明了圈养恒河猴的群体稳定性和随后的有害攻击和伤害。这种竞争性更新的目标是积极应用这些结果，这些结果描述了减少恒河猴群体有害攻击/伤害的三种主要途径，实施一系列扰动，将实验测试我们的相关发现。将对减少社会不稳定最重要的途径进行实验扰动，以因果验证哪些途径对群体稳定至关重要。这一验证将使我们能够建议国家自然保护区和其他灵长类动物设施的种群管理人员使用积极和适应性的方法进行管理，以减少有害的攻击并防止在周围饲养的恒河猴中发生严重疫情。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The NIH/NCRR sponsored breeding programs of the National Primate Research Centers commonly house rhesus macaques in multimale-multifemale social groups in large outdoor corrals. This breeding program aims to develop cost-effective methods for enhancing reproduction to increase the number of monkeys available for research and to provide appropriate socialization for their psychological well-being. Although these outdoor corrals simulate natural social and environmental features, one of the most difficult problems in managing socially-housed macaques is their propensity for deleterious aggression. From a management perspective, such aggression is undoubtedly the most problematic behavior observed in group-housed rhesus macaques which can readily escalate to the degree that it results in serious physical trauma, lower reproductive performance and reduced psychological well-being. For over three years we have been conducting an NIH-funded R24 study using social network analysis to examine the internal (e.g. group composition, personality and temperament) and external (e.g., management factors) that influence rates of deleterious aggression and wounding in group-housed rhesus macaques. Our research has provided strong evidence that individual, family and group characteristics such as temperament, family structure and sex ratio interact to influence network structures such as patterns of submission, reconciliation, grooming and conflict intervention that are indicative of group stability and consequent deleterious aggression and wounding in captive rhesus macaques. The goal of this competitive renewal is to actively apply these results, which delineates three major pathways for reducing deleterious aggression/wounding in rhesus groups, to implement a series of perturbations that will experimentally test our correlational findings. Experimental perturbation of the pathways most important to reducing social instability will be conducted to causally validate which pathways are critical for group stability. This validation will allow us to advise colony managers at NPRCs and other primate facilities to use active and adaptive approach to management to reduce deleterious aggression and prevent severe outbreaks in arouo-housed rhesus macaques.