Dominance status and copulatory vocalizations among male stump-tailed macaques in Thailand
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Dominance status and copulatory vocalizations among male stump‑tailed macaques in Thailand Aru Toyoda1,2,3 · Tamaki Maruhashi4 · Suchinda Malaivijitnond5,6 · Hiroki Koda3 Received: 30 June 2019 / Accepted: 8 April 2020 © Japan Monkey Centre and Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Male copulation calls sometimes play important roles in sexual strategies, attracting conspecific females or advertising their social status to conspecific males. These calls generally occur in sexually competitive societies such as harem groups and multi-male and multi-female societies. However, the call functions remain unclear because of limited availability of data sets that include a large number of male and female animals in naturalistic environments, particularly in primates. Here, we examined the possible function of male-specific copulation calls in wild stump-tailed macaques (Macaca arctoides) by analyzing the contexts and acoustic features of vocalizations. We observed 395 wild stump-tailed macaques inhabiting the Khao Krapuk Khao Taomor Non-Hunting Area in Thailand and recorded all occurrences of observed copulations. We counted 446 male-specific calls in 383 copulations recorded, and measured their acoustic characteristics. Data were categorized into three groups depending on their social status: dominant (alpha and coalition) males and non-dominant males. When comparing male status, alpha males most frequently produced copulation calls at ejaculation, coalition males produced less frequent calls than alpha males, and other non-dominant males rarely vocalized, maintaining silence even when mounting females. Acoustic analysis indicated no significant influence of status (alpha or coalition) on call number, bout duration, or further formant dispersion parameters. Our results suggest that male copulation calls of this species are social status-dependent signals. Furthermore, dominant males might actively transmit their social status and copulations to other male rivals to impede their challenging attacks, while other non-dominant males maintain silence to prevent the interference of dominants. Keywords Male copulation vocalizations · Male status · Multi-male multi-female society · Sexual strategy
Introduction Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-020-00820-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Aru Toyoda atoyoda.pri.kyoto‑[email protected] * Hiroki Koda koda.hiroki.7a@kyoto‑u.ac.jp 1
Academy of Emerging Science, Chubu University, Inuyama, Aichi 484‑8506, Japan
2
Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Saitama, Japan
3
Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
4
Musashi University, Tokyo, Japan
5
Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
6
National Primate Research Center of Thailand, Chulalongkorn University, Saraburi 18110, Thailand
Male sexual t
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