Annie Margaret Dean

(M.A. Conservation Biology in progress)

Understanding patterns of cooperative exchange offers the opportunity to discern underlying principles governing the social structures in social animals.  In many non-human primates, especially Old World anthropoids, grooming is the major, most time-consuming form of social exchange.  It is often reciprocated, and researchers have investigated patterns of grooming reciprocation both over large timescales and immediate timescales.  My study focuses on the short term dynamics of grooming reciprocation in blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis stuhlmanni) using 4.5 years of data collected on four groups living in the Kakamega Forest, Kenya.

 In blue monkeys, females are philopatric, forming the social core of the group.  Grooming is their most frequent form of affiliative social interaction, and has been noted as particularly reciprocal.  In species where females do not disperse, and where cooperative action is important for territorial defense, strong affiliative relationships with age-group cohorts may be an important complement to kin-based relationships.  Findings from other studies challenge such an egalitarian characterization, finding that blue monkeys exhibit definite partner preference in grooming relationships and groom frequently with some group members while not at all with others.  My study will assess how factors such as rank, kinship, age, quality of the partner relationship, and the presence of an infant guide an animal to reciprocate grooming and influence the amount of grooming she gives.

I completed my undergraduate degree in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. I have spent time looking at partner preference in mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) during a field course in Costa Rica.