School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale, Australia.
Elife. 2021 Nov 2;10:e69196. doi: 10.7554/eLife.69196.
In many species, within-group conflict leads to immediate avoidance of potential aggressors or increases in affiliation, but no studies have investigated delayed post-conflict management behaviour. Here, we experimentally test that possibility using a wild but habituated population of dwarf mongooses (). First, we used natural and playback-simulated foraging displacements to demonstrate that bystanders take notice of the vocalisations produced during such within-group conflict events but that they do not engage in any immediate post-conflict affiliative behaviour with the protagonists or other bystanders. We then used another playback experiment to assess delayed effects of within-group conflict on grooming interactions: we examined affiliative behaviour at the evening sleeping burrow, 30-60 min after the most recent simulated foraging displacement. Overall, fewer individuals groomed on evenings following an afternoon of simulated conflict, but those that did groomed more than on control evenings. Subordinate bystanders groomed with the simulated aggressor significantly less, and groomed more with one another, on conflict compared to control evenings. Our study provides experimental evidence that dwarf mongooses acoustically obtain information about within-group contests (including protagonist identity), retain that information, and use it to inform conflict-management decisions with a temporal delay.
在许多物种中，群体内冲突会导致个体立即回避潜在的攻击者或增加亲社会性，但尚无研究调查冲突后的延迟管理行为。在这里，我们使用野生但已适应环境的矮狐猴（）种群来实验性地检验这种可能性。首先，我们使用自然和模拟的觅食干扰来证明旁观者会注意到群体内冲突事件中产生的声音，但不会与主角或其他旁观者立即进行任何冲突后的亲社会性行为。然后，我们使用另一个回放实验来评估群体内冲突对梳理互动的延迟影响：我们在最近一次模拟觅食干扰后的傍晚在睡眠洞穴中观察了亲社会性行为。总体而言，在模拟冲突后的下午，傍晚进行梳理的个体较少，但进行梳理的个体比对照傍晚的个体梳得更多。与对照傍晚相比，从属旁观者在冲突傍晚与模拟攻击者的梳理明显减少，与彼此的梳理增加。我们的研究提供了实验证据，表明矮狐猴可以通过声音获得关于群体内竞争（包括主角身份）的信息，保留这些信息，并在时间延迟后利用这些信息做出冲突管理决策。
