[Babase] Questions re. maturity in ranker
Jeanne Altmann
altj at princeton.edu
Mon Oct 2 10:16:32 EDT 2006
WHEN CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS? IT IS MOSTLY CLEAR, HELPFUL, AND I'M IN
AGREEMENT, BUT A FEW THINGS TO DISCUSS,
J
-----Original Message-----
From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Susan
Alberts
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 8:50 AM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] Questions re. maturity in ranker
>A more general question along the same line:
>There are currently 6 types of rankings:
>
>ADF Adult Females
>ALL All group members
>ADM Adult Males
>ALF All Females
>ALM All Males
>FYM All females and males < 7
>
>Besides enforcing the consistency between ADF and ALF as you described
>above, should we also enforce the consistency, say, between ADM and
>ALM, and, in general, ALL with everything else?
Yes; males and females represent a similar situation in that ADM should
be extractable from ALM in the same way that ADF should be extractable
from ALF. However, in the case of males unlike females, the situation
does not arise in which non-adult males ever rank above adult males. So,
in principle males and females represent that same situation but in
practice we would not need to disentangle the ranks of young males from
those of adults.
(Note about the biology: this is because females start - and usually
complete - their adult rank attainment before they attain sexual
maturity. There is not much of a size difference between older juvenile
females and adult females, so it is feasible for older juveniles to
target adult females; also, maturing females get help from relatives in
attaining adult rank. So, adult rank attainment usually occurs a bit
before females are actually physically mature.
The situation for males is quite different; adult males are about twice
the size of males that have just attained sexual maturity, and newly
mature males must go through a substantial growth-spurt before they can
win fights against adult males; hence, for males, we formally designate
a period of adolescence -- called subadulthood -- which occurs after
they have attained physical maturity and are going through the growth
spurt, but before they have won any fights with adult males.
Subadulthood ends, and adulthood begins, when they begin to rank among
adult males. Hence, any male that ranks among adult males is by
definition an adult male.)
>
>Would it suffice to let ranker users to produce an ALL ranking, from
>which all other rankings are automatically derived (by extracting
>relevant entries and retaining the same relative ranking but
>renumbering to eliminate gaps)?
>
I am not sure that I understand this question so let me know if the
following paragraph doesn't answer it. I think that you are asking, why
don't we just create one ranking -- the ALL ranking -- that includes all
the members in the group, and then just have a rule that allows us to
extract each of the other rnktypes from this ALL. We don't do this
because it is actually quite complicated to rank all group members
together, for the following reasons. (1) There are usually many group
members, making the ranking task more difficult.
(2) Dealing with maturing animals leads to circularities
(non-transitive rank relationships), because during maturation animals
do not always climb the ranks in a linear fashion. These circularities
are brief but can be quite complicated, and the more maturing animals
you are dealing with the more there are -- and combining males and
females increases the number of maturing animals you are dealing with.
In addition, the biological evidence suggests that within-sex rankings
are likely to be the relevant rankings from the animal's perspective,
rather than whole-group rankings. So, although we have all group
rankings for some periods of time,, we don't create these routinely.
In general, age-sex classes rank as follows from highest to lowest:
Adult males, subadult males, adult females, juvenile males, juvenile
females. However, as I mentioned above, animals mature in a
non-systematic fashion and as they grow and climb ranks, brief
circularities result.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------
Susan Alberts, Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham
NC 27708
919-660-7272 (phone), 919-660-7293 (FAX)
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