Endocrine Aspects of Aggression and Dominance in Chimpanzees

这项研究将首次记录睾酮和皮质醇这两种激素的浓度与野生黑猩猩的社会行为和营养水平之间的关系。我们将研究两个野生黑猩猩种群（在乌干达的基巴莱国家公园和坦桑尼亚的贡贝国家公园），它们生活在习惯社区中，每个社区大约有10只成年雄性黑猩猩。在每个地点，我们将从树上的个体收集尿液并将其冷冻以供以后分析。我们还将对成年黑猩猩的社会行为进行系统的观察，包括攻击和服从的比率、性行为和联盟。然后，我们将发现（在我们的初步研究中）睾丸激素和优势是否在成年雄性黑猩猩中始终相互关联，如果是的话，这两者是如何与攻击频率相关的。我们还将确定性行为水平如何与这两种激素相关，激素水平如何随群体组成而变化，以及它们如何与食物供应的季节性波动相关。通过分析野生黑猩猩的激素与攻击性之间的关系，本研究将有助于理解人类平行系统的进化和功能。

This study will be the first to document how the concentrations of two hormones, testosterone and cortisol, are related to the social behavior and nutritional plane of wild chimpanzees. We will study two wild populations of chimpanzees (in Kibale National Park, Uganda; and Gombe National Park, Tanzania), living in habituated communities that each contain about 10 adult males. In each site we will collect urine from individuals in trees and freeze it for later analysis. We will also make systematic observations of the social behavior of adult chimpanzees, including rates of aggression and submission, sexual behavior, and alliances. We will then find out whether (as in our pilot study) testosterone and dominance are consistently related to each other among adult male chimpanzees, and if so, how both are also related to the frequency of aggression. We will also establish how levels of sexual behavior are related to both hormones, how hormonal levels change in response to group composition, and how they are related to seasonal fluctuations in food supply. By analyzing the relationship between hormones and aggression in wild chimpanzees, this study will contribute to understanding the evolution and function of the parallel system in humans.