Learning to share: long-term coexistence among unevenly matched competitors in capuchin monkeys

SCARRY, C. J.; TUJAGUE, M. P

Quito

Congreso; Congreso conjunto IPS - SLAPrim Quito 2022; 2022

International Primatological Society - Sociedad Latinoamericana de Primatología

In many primate populations, apparently stable coexistence occurs among groups, even when intergroup dominance relations are despotic, and evidence for group extinctions or territorial displacements is limited. Here we investigate the consequences of long-term familiarity and recent experience on use of contested areas by three groups of tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus nigritus) at Iguazú, Argentina. During all-day group follows between November and December of 2008 and 2009, we recorded the location of the group?s center at 15-minute intervals and fitted LMMs to identify the factors affecting the interval between revisitations to portions of the home range (N = 814 revisits). In the absence of intergroup encounters, groups return more rapidly to areas with either high densities of currently productive fruit resources or that are used heavily during other parts of the year. Regardless of the current value of an area, intergroup encounters occurring in intensively used areas do not significantly affect return times; however, responses to intergroup encounters occurring in infrequently visited portions of the home range depend upon local resource availability. Both wins and losses in low-quality areas significantly increase revisitation intervals, whereas return times decrease following an encounter in high-quality areas. These results support a learning-based mechanism for home range maintenance, wherein territorial expansion by dominant groups is constrained by limited knowledge of the area and costs imposed by subordinate groups.