Gerald Melissa S
National Institutes of Health, USA.
Primates. 2002 Apr;43(2):127-32. doi: 10.1007/BF02629672.
Dominance is often presumed to confer priority of access to resources. This study evaluated the relationship between two assessments of dominance: (1) social dominance, based on agonistic interactions and (2) feeding priority among pairs of unfamiliar adult vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus) differing in scrotal colour, but matched for height, weight and testicular volume, during paired introduction experiments. Results of this investigation showed that neither size differences nor scrotal colour were predictive of feeding priority, and social dominance was inversely related to feeding priority. This finding demonstrates that different assessments of dominance can yield different outcomes even within the same primate taxon. I propose that male dominance rank may best predict access to resources when there is direct contest competition over a resource, which is not immediately exhaustible, whereas highly impulsive low ranking males may gain a competitive edge in scramble competitions for ephemeral and small resources.
优势地位通常被认为赋予了获取资源的优先权。本研究评估了两种优势地位评估之间的关系：（1）基于争斗互动的社会优势地位，以及（2）在配对引入实验中，对阴囊颜色不同但身高、体重和睾丸体积相匹配的陌生成年绿猴（长尾黑颚猴）成对组合中的进食优先权。这项调查结果表明，体型差异和阴囊颜色都不能预测进食优先权，并且社会优势地位与进食优先权呈负相关。这一发现表明，即使在同一灵长类分类群中，对优势地位的不同评估也可能产生不同结果。我认为，当对一种不会立即耗尽的资源存在直接竞争时，雄性优势等级可能最能预测对资源的获取，而高度冲动的低等级雄性在争夺短暂而少量资源的竞争中可能获得竞争优势。
