Breeding-Related Changes in Social Interactions Among Female Vulturine Guineafowl

Abstract

Agonistic and affiliative interactions with group members dictate individual access to resources, and investment in competing for resources is often traded off with other needs. For example, reproductive investment can reduce body condition and, thereby, an individual's ability to win future agonistic interactions. However, group members may also alter their behaviour towards reproductive individuals, such as becoming more or less aggressive. Here, we investigated the social consequences of reproduction in female vulturine guineafowl Acryllium vulturinum, a plural breeder in which females disperse and are subordinate to males. We found opposing patterns for within- and between-sex dominance interactions experienced by females from before to after breeding. Specifically, breeding females became far less likely to win dominance interactions with non-breeding females after breeding than before breeding, but received considerably fewer male aggressions than non-breeding females after breeding. Despite a limited sample size, our study reveals that reproduction can have nuanced trade-offs with dominance and suggests that the study of dominance may benefit from explicitly considering variation in interaction rates as an additional factor affecting individuals.