Biology subjects

Zeeman, A. N.

Publications and source records attributed to Zeeman, A. N..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Social status predicts self-directed behaviors, contingent on broader social dynamics

Emotional states like anxiety are adaptive, assisting individuals during social uncertainty and threats. While humans can self-report anxiety, assessing comparable states in animals requires objective measures. Self-directed behaviours (SDBs), including self-scratch, autogroom, and yawn, are indicators of anxiety, particularly in nonhuman primates. Yet it is unclear whether they reflect a common underlying process or distinct responses shaped by demography, social interactions and status, and the broader social dynamics. We studied 13 macaque groups across six species along a despotic-egalitarian social style gradient to investigate the factors associated with variation in SDBs. Our findings revealed partial correlational consistency among the SDBs, where only self-scratch and autogroom positively correlated. Further, we found that males yawned more than females, and individuals receiving less aggression exhibited longer autogroom bouts. Dominance rank showed behaviour-specific effects, with weak evidence for an association with self-scratch, longer autogrooming in subordinates, and a non-linear pattern in yawning, which was lowest at intermediate ranks. Alpha status was linked to more frequent yawning than others. And finally, social style showed no consistent effects on SDBs. Our research demonstrates that SDBs in macaques reflect differential responses related to social uncertainty rather than one anxiety dimension, providing insights into primate emotion regulation.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Despotism promotes cooperation through enhanced interdependencies in non-human primate societies

The evolutionary mechanisms of cooperation are well-studied, yet what motivates individuals to cooperate remains unclear. Although conventionally associated with enhanced social tolerance (self-domestication hypothesis) and prosociality (cooperative-breeding hypothesis), individuals belonging to species that are neither self-domesticated nor cooperatively-breeding also cooperate. An overarching interdependency hypothesis posits that inter-individual dependencies promote cooperation, but comparative evidence is lacking. We experimentally studied cooperation, prosociality, and tolerance in six macaque species along a despotic-egalitarian gradient. Within-group cooperation was higher in despotic than egalitarian societies yet restricted to few partners. Prosociality, kinship, and tolerance positively predicted cooperation success. Agent-based models consistently showed that despotic societies have fewer but more stable social bonds and, thus, higher interdependencies than egalitarian ones. Our results suggest that interdependencies facilitate the emergence and maintenance of cooperation.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2021

Toward an understanding of the chemical ecology of alternative reproductive tactics in the bulb mite (Rhizoglyphus robini)

BackgroundUnder strong sexual selection, certain species evolve distinct intrasexual, alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs). In many cases, ARTs can be viewed as environmentally-cued threshold traits, such that ARTs coexist if their relative fitness alternates over the environmental cue gradient. Surprisingly, the chemical ecology of ARTs has been underexplored in this context. To our knowledge, no prior study has directly quantified pheromone production for ARTs in a male-polymorphic species. Here, we used the bulb mite--in which males are either armed fighters that kill conspecifics, or unarmed scramblers--as a model system to gain insight into the role of pheromones in the evolutionary maintenance of ARTs. Given that scramblers forgo investment into weaponry, we tested whether scramblers produce higher pheromone quantities than fighters, which would improve the fitness of the scrambler phenotype, e.g. through female mimicry to avoid aggression from competitors. To this end, we sampled mites from a rich and a poor nutritional environment and quantified their production of the female sex pheromone -acaridial through gas chromatography analysis. ResultsWe found a positive relationship between pheromone production and body size, but males exhibited a steeper slope in pheromone production with increasing size than females. Females exhibited a higher average pheromone production than males. We found no significant difference in slope of pheromone production over body size between fighters and scramblers. However, scramblers reached larger body sizes and higher pheromone production than fighters, providing some evidence for a potential female mimic strategy adopted by large scramblers. Pheromone production was significantly higher in mites from the rich nutritional environment than the poor environment. ConclusionFurther elucidation of pheromone functionality in bulb mites, and additional inter-and intrasexual comparisons of pheromone profiles are needed to determine if the observed intersexual and intrasexual differences in pheromone production are adaptive, if they are a by-product of allometric scaling, or diet-mediated pheromone production under weak selection. We argue chemical ecology offers a novel perspective for research on ARTs and other complex life-history traits.

evolutionary biology↗