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. 2011 Jul 15;333(6040):357-60.
doi: 10.1126/science.1207120.

Life at the top: rank and stress in wild male baboons

Laurence R Gesquiere  1 , Niki H Learn, M Carolina M Simao, Patrick O Onyango, Susan C Alberts, Jeanne Altmann
Affiliations

Life at the top: rank and stress in wild male baboons

Laurence R Gesquiere et al. Science. .

Abstract

In social hierarchies, dominant individuals experience reproductive and health benefits, but the costs of social dominance remain a topic of debate. Prevailing hypotheses predict that higher-ranking males experience higher testosterone and glucocorticoid (stress hormone) levels than lower-ranking males when hierarchies are unstable but not otherwise. In this long-term study of rank-related stress in a natural population of savannah baboons (Papio cynocephalus), high-ranking males had higher testosterone and lower glucocorticoid levels than other males, regardless of hierarchy stability. The singular exception was for the highest-ranking (alpha) males, who exhibited both high testosterone and high glucocorticoid levels. In particular, alpha males exhibited much higher stress hormone levels than second-ranking (beta) males, suggesting that being at the very top may be more costly than previously thought.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Relationship between male dominance rank and glucocorticoids (A) or testosterone (B) concentrations. The y axis represents the residuals of log-transformed hormone concentration obtained from a GLMM including age, environmental factors and hierarchy stability as fixed factors, male identity as a random factor (23). Each value represents the mean ± SE across male monthly averages. The dotted lines represent the regression lines determined using all the monthly male hormone values. N = number of monthly averages, N = number of males. Sample sizes in A and B are the same. Note that this visualization is not a substitute for the full statistical model results which are presented in table 1.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Relationship between male dominance rank and glucocorticoid (A, B) and testosterone (C, D) concentrations in stable and in unstable hierarchies, illustrating the similar relationships with dominance rank in both stable and unstable conditions (identified statistically as the absence of a significant interaction between dominance rank and stability; see table 1 and text). Separate GLMM models were created for each condition (stable and unstable) and each hormone. In each case, values on the Y axis represent residuals of log-transformed hormone concentrations from the respective GLMM model, which included age and environmental factors as fixed factors, and male identity as a random factor (23). Each plotted value represents the mean ± SE across male monthly averages. The dotted lines represent the regression lines determined using all the monthly male hormone values. N = number of monthly averages, N = number of males. Sample sizes in A and C and in B and D are the same. Inserts represent the alpha vs. beta comparison using the reduced dataset that included only alpha and beta males. Note that this visualization is not a substitute for the full statistical model results which are presented in table 1.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Differences between alpha and beta males in the proportion of challenges received, rate of grooming received, number of agonistic encounters and consort time. Each bar represents the mean ± SE of the difference between the alpha and beta male within a group-month (alpha value minus beta value). N = number of alpha-beta pairs. For each analysis, an alpha-beta pair is represented by a single value that represents the overall difference over time for that pair. Any pair is included if data were available for the pair for at least three months and if at least one member of the pair had a non-zero value during that time (23).
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Comment in

  • Behavior. Sympathy for the CEO.
    Sapolsky RM. Sapolsky RM. Science. 2011 Jul 15;333(6040):293-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1209620. Science. 2011. PMID: 21764734 No abstract available.

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