There's a new ABRP paper out on predictors of female dominance rank. Dominance rank influences many fitness-related traits in the Amboseli baboons and in other mammalian populations. Therefore, understanding how and why animals attain a given dominance rank is an important goal in behavioral ecology. For female baboons, dominance rank is maternally inherited and generally follows predictable patterns. Specifically, adult daughters attain a rank immediately below their mother, and in reverse age order (a phenomenon known as ‘youngest ascendency’). This pattern of rank inheritance is assumed to be widespread and generally stable in cercopithecine primates; however, few studies have systematically examined whether the rules of female rank inheritance always hold true, and under what circumstances they are violated. Read More