| Social conflicts within wild animal troops has always been a focus in the study of animal behavior, such conflicts led to distinctive hierarchy within the group of non-human primates, and caused huge attention on the study of group hierarchy, but for the strategy of conflict behavior, especially the conflict intensity is still lacking.This study starts from January 2014 to December 2014; focused on a wild Taihangshan macaque group lived in Wangwu Mountain(WW-1 group). We tracking the group continuously, recording the population imformation and using all currents recording and focal animal sampling method to record all the conflicts. Total effective recording of conflict behaviors in this group lasts for 361 h, detailed each recording with cause, process and result in both the conflict period and post-conflict period. The main results of this study were listed as follows.1) Population dynamics Population dynamic in studied group maintains in the exponential growth with a stable trend. The total number of individuals within the group, the number of adult individuals and number of infant monkeys all reached a higher level, mortality rate and emigration rate both stays in low, showing good t adaptation to the background environment.2) Conflicts initialed by adult male Taihangshan macacaque Adult males’ conflicts have a stable pattern. They mainly targeted at adult females. Conflicts initiated by dominators than subordinates. The main cause of conflict ise food, followed with advantage position, infants, starle and redirection.Based on the intensity of the conflict, all conflict behavior are divided into four categories from intense to slight, reads featuring sexual intimidation, offensive threat,contact type conflict and damage type fighting. Frequency of the second level was obviously higher than the other three grades; Conflict between males, causes the highest frequency of redirection. The distribution pattern based on cost-benefit analysis, meaning through the longtime in wilds, the group adapt to the optimal conflict modes to maintain their survival.3) Conflicts initialed by adult female Taihangshan macacaque Adult females’ conflict pattern is similar to that in adult males. They mainly targeted for adult females. Higher-ranking individuals initial most conflicts. The main cause of conflict ise food, followed with infants, advantage position, starle and redirection. Frequency of the second level was obviously higher while the third level truns much higher than the first and forth level. When we take the third party involved in to account, the assistance for adult females increased significantly, as well as the arousal behaviors.4) Differences in conflict behaviors between genders Inconclusion, they share same charactors that the main victimss are adult females, the main cause of conflicts is food; conflict initiated by dominators than subordinates, conflict intensity usually holds in second level. But there is still clear difference between genders: the adult males initialed more conflicts than adult females, as their ranking much higher than the females; when Adult females attack adult males, the second level conflict intensity decreased obviously; the conflict frequency between adult females decreased obviously with closer relativity. In the conflicts initialed by Adult males, redirection increased significantly, while when the adult females initialed the conflicts, the arousal behavior and counter-aggression by third-party individuals increased significantly. When the victims are adult females,counter-aggression behavior in third party are significantly increased.When the vicim is adult male, the rest catagories of behavior is more active. |
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