Female Social Connectivity through the Leadership and Movement Progression of Tibetan Macaques at Mt. Huangshan, China

The present study investigates the leadership and progression of collective movements of Tibetan macaques (<em>Macaca thibetana</em>) found in Mt. Huangshan, China. I gathered information on their movements and social networks through all-occurrence, focal and scan sampling. I hypothesize that high-ranking females lead more collective movements than males as they have highly structured social bonds. I also predict that movements weighted by female presence are more efficient as societies are matrilineally structured and females are more socially connected. There were a total of 128 successful collective movements recorded over a 2-month period. There was no significant effect of sex, age or rank on the leadership frequency. The highest-ranking female (YH) and a young female (TXX) led more collective movements than expected by chance, which may be a consequence of the mating season. There was a significant difference in successful movement time between movements weighted by female presence and those unweighted, which may be due to the matrilineally-structured societies and strong female bonds present.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Primate Behavior

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Fratellone, Gregory P

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lixing Sun
• Lori K. Sheeran
• R. Steven Wagner

• Social Networks
• Collective Movement
• Macaca thibetana
• Decision-making
• Leadership
• Animal Studies
• Biological and Physical Anthropology
• Leadership Studies
• Other Animal Sciences
• Other Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Social Statistics

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/60

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-1065