Follow the Leader: Correlates of Juvenile Leadership in Wild Chimpanzees
Open AccessMost primate species are socially-cohesive. Group-living primates enjoy the benefits of sociality—such as lower predation risk and better foraging efficiency—but must coordinate movements despite differences in kinship, affiliation, sex, age, and reproductive status. The majority of research on primate group movements has focused on species that travel as a socially cohesive unit. However, in fission-fusion living primates, in which members of a community associate in temporary subgroups, leadership is poorly understood. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schinfurthii) represent an ideal species to study the complexities of leadership and followership as the fission-fusion nature of this genus may allow for a broader range of individuals to influence leadership, such as juveniles, compared to group-living primates in which membership is relatively stable and cohesive. Juveniles, represent an interesting class in which to consider leadership as this period is hypothesized to be an important time for young primates to develop the social and foraging skills needed for adulthood. Using 34 years of data collected on wild chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, I investigated juvenile leadership in chimpanzee family groups. I first explored the relationship between juvenile age and sex on consensus movement (i.e. joint travel initiations by both the mother and juvenile). My results indicate that both sex and age of the juvenile affect the frequency of consensus movements. Second, I investigated multiple variables of juvenile leadership. My results indicate that the sex of the juvenile affects juvenile leadership, as juvenile males lead more than juvenile females.
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Chambers_gwu_0075M_14715.pdf | 2019-10-20 | Open Access |
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