The dissection of a despotic society: exploration, dominance and hormonal traits

Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) live in large colonies with one breeding female (queen), one to three breeding males, and the remainder are non-reproductive subordinates. We investigated how the dominance ranking position in naked mole-rats differs with exploration (the propensity to explore a novel environment), and endocrine related markers. Faecal progestagen metabolite (fPM), glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM), androgen metabolite (fAM) metabolite, and plasma prolactin concentrations were quantified in breeding, high, middle and low ranked females and males. There were no significant differences between the dominance ranking positions and exploration behaviour. Interestingly, the queens and high-ranking females had higher fGCM and fAM concentrations compared to middle and low ranked females; possibly due to an increased possibility of conflict with each other. The queen had significantly higher fPM concentrations than all other ranked females since she is responsible for procr..., , Microsoft Excel/Numbers, # The dissection of a despotic society: exploration, dominance and hormonal traits

This dataset has all the relevant variables used to investigate 1) if the order of the exploration test had an effect on overall exploration score, 2) to find out if there was a significant difference between dominance ranking position and weight to each response variable (exploration score, plasma prolactin, fGCM, fAM, and fPM concentrations), 3) to check the correlation between endocrine related response variables.

### Code/Software

The dataset is located in one file named 'Manuscript Data.csv', column are described below:

'Colony' = Naked mole-rat (NMR) colony name (7 colonies used)

'Exploration Score' = exploration score from each individual from PCA analysis

'ID' = Individual identification for each NMR in each colony

'Personality_Order' = the order in which NMR individuals were added back into their natal colony

'Tag' = unique individual tag number

'Prolactin' = prolactin concentrations fo...