The influence of sociality, stress levels and personality traits on individual participation in intergroup encounters in vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus).

群居动物如何合作并实现成功的集体行动以保护资源，以及它们如何在相邻群体之间建立关系，近年来已成为动物行为研究的中心课题。有几个因素可以影响群体层面上群体遭遇的结果，例如群体规模的差异。然而，最近的研究表明，实际参与者数量的优势对相遇的结果更为重要。这些发现表明，为了理解集体资源防御，包括可能影响群体遭遇的个人特征是至关重要的。在这个项目中，我建议调查如何社会性，压力水平和人格特质的影响，个人参与在南非的野生黑长尾猴（绿猴pygerythrus）的三个习惯性群体的群体遭遇。在这里，我将结合来自两个数据集的联合收割机行为和生理数据。第一个数据集已经可用于该项目，包括1124个群体遭遇的详细信息（包括参与个体的信息），行为数据（我将从中构建社交网络来推断社会性），以及观察群体遭遇的同一时期三个研究组中所有个体的粪便皮质醇水平。第二个数据集将包括基于我将在该领域进行的实验的人格特质数据。合作的原则和挑战在一系列集体行动中是一致的，但个人的贡献各不相同。因此，在这个项目中提出的方面的调查将有助于不仅在资源防御合作的知识，但在群体生活的动物合作和集体行动的动力学的一般理解。

How group-living animals cooperate and achieve successful collective action for resource defense and how they establish relationships between neighboring groups has recently become a central topic in the study of animal behavior. Several factors can affect the outcome of group encounters on the group level, as for example differences in group size. However, recent studies demonstrated that advantages in the number of actual participants are even more crucial for the outcome of encounters. These findings suggest that in order to understand collective resource defense it is crucial to include the individual characteristics that can affect the participation in group encounters. In this project I propose to investigate how sociality, stress levels and personality traits influence the individual participation in group encounters in three habituated groups of wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) in South Africa. Here, I will combine behavioral and physiological data from two datasets. The first dataset is already available for the project, and includes detailed information on 1124 group encounters (including information on participating individuals), behavioral data (from where I will construct the social networks to infer sociality), and fecal cortisol levels of all individuals in the three study groups from the same period when the group encounters were observed. The second dataset will include data on personality traits based on experiments that I will conduct in the field. The principles and challenges of cooperation are consistent over a range of collective actions, with variable individual contribution. Therefore, the investigation of the aspects proposed in this project will contribute not only to the knowledge on cooperation in resource defense but to the general comprehension of cooperation and the dynamics of collective action in group-living animals.