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Socio-endocrinology revisited: New tools to tackle old questions / CHARLOTTE CHRISTENSEN
Swansea University Author: CHARLOTTE CHRISTENSEN
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Copyright: The author, Charlotte Christensen, 2022.
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DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUthesis.59827
Abstract
Animals’ social environments impact their health and survival, but the proximate links between sociality and fitness are still not fully understood. In this thesis, I develop and apply new approaches to address an outstanding question within this sociality-fitness link: does grooming (a widely studi...
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Swansea
2022
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Doctoral |
| Degree name: | Ph.D |
| Supervisor: | Fürtbauer, Ines ; King, Andrew J. ; O’Riain, Justin M. |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa59827 |
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| Abstract: |
Animals’ social environments impact their health and survival, but the proximate links between sociality and fitness are still not fully understood. In this thesis, I develop and apply new approaches to address an outstanding question within this sociality-fitness link: does grooming (a widely studied, positive social interaction) directly affect glucocorticoid concentrations (GCs; a group of steroid hormones indicating physiological stress) in a wild primate? To date, negative, long-term correlations between grooming and GCs have been found, but the logistical difficulties of studying proximate mechanisms in the wild leave knowledge gaps regarding the short-term, causal mechanisms that underpin this relationship. New technologies, such as collar-mounted tri-axial accelerometers, can provide the continuous behavioural data required to match grooming to non-invasive GC measures (Chapter 1). Using Chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) living on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa as a model system, I identify giving and receiving grooming using tri-axial accelerometers and supervised machine learning methods, with high overall accuracy (~80%) (Chapter 2). I then test what socio-ecological variables predict variation in faecal and urinary GCs (fGCs and uGCs) (Chapter 3). Shorter and rainy days are associated with higher fGCs and uGCs, respectively, suggesting that environmental conditions may impose stressors in the form of temporal bottlenecks. Indeed, I find that short days and days with more rain-hours are associated with reduced giving grooming (Chapter 4), and that this reduction is characterised by fewer and shorter grooming bouts. Finally, I test whether grooming predicts GCs, and find that while there is a long-term negative correlation between grooming and GCs, grooming in the short-term, in particular giving grooming, is associated with higher fGCs and uGCs (Chapter 5). I end with a discussion on how the new tools I applied have enabled me to advance our understanding of sociality and stress in primate social systems (Chapter 6). |
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| Item Description: |
A selection of third party content is redacted or is partially redacted from this thesis due to copyright restrictions.ORCiD identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7697-9903 |
| Keywords: |
chacma baboons, grooming, behaviour, endocrinology, glucocorticoids, tri-axial accelerometer, machine-learning |
| College: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering |