Single aggressive interactions increase urinary glucocorticoid levels in wild male chimpanzees
Date
25/02/2015Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
A basic premise in behavioural ecology is the cost-benefit arithmetic, which determines both behavioural decisions and evolutionary processes. Aggressive interactions can be costly on an energetic level, demanding increased energy or causing injuries, and on a psychological level, in the form of increased anxiety and damaged relationships between opponents. Here we used urinary glucocorticoid (uGC) levels to assess the costs of aggression in wild chimpanzees of Budongo Forest, Uganda. We collected 169 urine samples from nine adult male chimpanzees following 14 aggressive interactions (test condition) and 10 resting events (control condition). Subjects showed significantly higher uGC levels after single aggressive interactions compared to control conditions, likely for aggressors as well as victims. Higher ranking males had greater increases of uGC levels after aggression than lower ranking males. In contrast, uGC levels showed no significant change in relation to aggression length or intensity, indicating that psychological factors might have played a larger role than mere energetic expenditure. We concluded that aggressive behaviour is costly for both aggressors and victims and that costs seem poorly explained by energetic demands of the interaction. Our findings are relevant for studies of post-conflict interactions, since we provide evidence that both aggressors and victims experience a stress response to conflict.
Citation
Wittig , R M , Crockford , C , Weltring , A , Deschner , T & Zuberbühler , K 2015 , ' Single aggressive interactions increase urinary glucocorticoid levels in wild male chimpanzees ' , PLoS One , vol. 10 , no. 2 , e0118695 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118695
Publication
PLoS One
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1932-6203Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2015 Wittig et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
Financial support was provided by British Academy [http://www.britac.ac.uk/] (CC), Leakey Foundation [http://www.leakeyfoundation.org/] (CC, RMW, TD), Leverhulm Trust [http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/] (KZ), Max Planck Society [http://www.eva.mpg.de/] (AW, CC, RMW, TD) and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland [http://www.rzss.org.uk/], in providing core funding for Budongo Conservation Field Station. This project has received additional funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for research, technological development and demonstration [http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm] under grant agreement no 283871.Collections
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