What are Friends For? The Adaptive Value of Social Bonds

这项研究的目的是调查社会纽带在雌性灵长类动物生活中所起的作用。对于灵长类雌性动物来说，紧密的社会纽带可能代表着对竞争压力的有效回应。当生态条件有利于共同保护资源时，选择将有利于与潜在盟友发展强大的社会纽带。对这些联系的实证测试产生了模棱两可的结果，现在对社会联系对女性生活的长期影响知之甚少。这项研究将提供关于肯尼亚安博塞利国家公园五个习惯性群体中成年雌性狒狒之间的社会关系、联盟支持、觅食竞争和攻击性的性质的全面信息。将使用关于女性关系和生育史的档案数据来评估女性社会关系质量的变化是否始终与寿命或生殖成功的差异有关。总之，这些分析将为非人类灵长类雌性动物之间的社会纽带的结构和功能提供新的证据。原始人化石的记录表明，原始人一直是群居生活的，性二态的程度表明，最早的原始人生活在包含多个雌性的群居中。生态压力可能塑造了原始人女性之间社会关系的性质，特别是她们的集体行动能力和形成密切社会关系的倾向。这项研究中获得的数据将帮助我们构建更丰富的早期原始人生活和社会关系的模型，并更好地理解塑造人类合作、建立联盟和友谊能力的选择性力量。

The objective of this study is to investigate the role that social bonds play in the lives of female primates. For primate females, close social bonds may represent an effective response to competitive pressures. When ecological conditions favor joint defense of resources, selection is expected to favor the development of strong social bonds with potential allies. Empirical tests of these linkages have produced equivocal results and little is now known about the long-term effects of social bonds on females' lives. This study will produce comprehensive information about the nature of social relationships, coalitionary support, feeding competition, and aggression among adult female baboons in five well-habituated groups in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Archival data on female relationships and reproductive histories will be used to evaluate whether variation in the quality of female social relationships is consistently linked to variation in longevity or reproductive success. Together, these analyses will provide new evidence about the structure and function of social bonds among nonhuman primate females. The hominid fossil record suggests that hominids have always lived in groups, and the extent of sexual dimorphism suggests that the earliest hominids lived in groups that contained multiple females. Ecological pressures may have shaped the nature of social relationships among hominid females, particularly their capacity for collective action and their propensity to form close social bonds. The data obtained in this study will help us to construct more richly textured models of the lives and social relationships of early hominids and to develop a better understanding of the selective forces that shaped the human capacity for cooperation, establishing alliances, and friendship.