ArticleHormones and behavior2021
Aggression, glucocorticoids, and the chronic costs of status competition for wild male chimpanzees.
Article in Hormones and behavior, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 79 citations in OpenAlex.
- The adaptation of the gut microbiome to social environmental changes in an Asian langur.iScience · 2026Article
- Balancing Reproduction and Survival: Seasonal Body Mass Dynamics in a High-Altitude Primate (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Female Affiliation and Status in Semi-Free-Ranging Chimpanzees.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Impact of Aggression on Bystanders: Quadratic Post-Conflict Affiliation in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Group traits moderate the relationship between individual social traits and fitness in gorillas.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Energetic costs of social dominance in wild male baboons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A female-biased gene expression signature of dominance in cooperatively breeding meerkats.Molecular ecology · 2024Article
- Selective social tolerance drives differentiated relationships among wild female chimpanzees.Animal behaviour · 2024Article
- Age-related reproductive effort in male chimpanzees: terminal investment or alternative tactics?Animal behaviour · 2024Article
- Age-related physiological dysregulation progresses slowly in semi-free-ranging chimpanzees.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Article
- Article
- Shared community effects and the non-genetic maternal environment shape cortisol levels in wild chimpanzees.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Effects of local versus global competition on reproductive skew and sex differences in social dominance behaviour.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Aggressive, Submissive, and Affiliative Behavior in Sanctuary Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes) During Social Integration.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Agonism and grooming behaviour explain social status effects on physiology and gene regulation in rhesus macaques.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Distinct gene regulatory signatures of dominance rank and social bond strength in wild baboons.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Behavioural and physiological plasticity in social hierarchies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Across vertebrates, high social status affords preferential access to resources, and is expected to correlate positively with health and longevity. Increasing evidence, however, suggests that although dominant females generally enjoy reduced exposure to physiological and psychosocial stressors, dominant males do not. Here we test the hypothesis that costly mating competition by high-ranking males results in chronic, potentially harmful elevations in glucocorticoid production. We examined urinary glucocorticoids (n = 8029 samples) in a 20-year longitudinal study of wild male chimpanzees (n = 20 adults) in the Kanyawara community of Kibale National Park, Uganda. We tested whether glucocorticoid production was associated with dominance rank in the long term, and with mating competition and dominance instability in the short term. Using mixed models, we found that both male aggression and glucocorticoid excretion increased when the dominance hierarchy was unstable, and when parous females were sexually available. Glucocorticoid excretion was positively associated with male rank in stable and unstable hierarchies, and in mating and non-mating contexts. Glucorticoids increased with both giving and receiving aggression, but giving aggression was the primary mechanism linking elevated glucocorticoids with high rank. Glucocorticoids also increased with age. Together these results show that investment in male-male competition increases cumulative exposure to glucocorticoids, suggesting a long-term tradeoff with health that may constrain the ability to maintain high status across the life course. Our data suggest that the relationship between social rank and glucocorticoid production often differs in males and females owing to sex differences in the operation of sexual selection.
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