School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK.
Biol Lett. 2013 Jun 26;9(4):20130428. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2013.0428. Print 2013 Aug 23.
We report the death of 30 wild Barbary macaques, living in two groups, during an exceptionally cold and snowy winter in the Middle Atlas Mountains, Morocco. We examined whether an individual's time spent feeding, the quality and number of its social relationships, sex and rank predicted whether it survived the winter or not. The time an individual spent feeding and the number of social relationships that an individual had in the group were positive and significant predictors of survival. This is the first study to show that the degree of sociality affects an individual's chance of survival following extreme environmental conditions. Our findings support the view that sociality is directly related to an individual's fitness, and that factors promoting the establishment and maintenance of social relationships are favoured by natural selection.
我们报告了在摩洛哥中阿特拉斯山脉一个异常寒冷和多雪的冬天里，生活在两个群体中的 30 只野生巴巴里猕猴的死亡。我们研究了个体在冬季是否能够生存下来，这与它的觅食时间、社会关系的质量和数量、性别和等级是否有关。个体的觅食时间和在群体中拥有的社会关系数量是生存的积极和显著预测因素。这是第一个表明社会性程度会影响个体在极端环境条件下生存机会的研究。我们的研究结果支持了这样一种观点，即社会性与个体的适应性直接相关，并且促进社会关系建立和维持的因素是自然选择所青睐的。
