Social stability via management of natal males in captive rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)

Keystone individuals are expected to disproportionately contribute to group stability. For instance, rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) who police conflict contribute towards stability. Not all individuals’ motivations align with mechanisms of group stability. In wild systems, males typically disperse at maturity and attempt to ascend via contest competition. In a captive system, dispersal is not naturally enabled – individuals attempt to ascend in their natal groups, which can be enabled by matrilineal kin potentially destabilizing group dynamics. We relocated select high-ranking natal males from five groups and assessed group stability before and after. We quantified hierarchical metrics at the individual and group level. After removal, we found significantly higher aggression against the established hierarchy (reversals), indicative of opportunistic attempts to change the hierarchy. Mixed-sex social signaling became more hierarchical, but the strength of this effect varied. Stable stru..., These data are primarily social networks of five groups, observed for 12 weeks. Observation periods were divided into: 6-week baseline and 6-week post-removal, with the natal male removal event occurring early in week 7. Agonistic data were collected using event sampling; affiliative data were collected using scan sampling., , # Social stability via management of natal males in captive rhesus macaques Macaca mulatta

Alexander J. Pritchard **a, c**

Brianne A. Beisner **b**

Amy Nathman **a**

Brenda McCowan **a**, **c**

a: California National Primate Research Center, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA;

b: Emory National Primate Research Center Field Station, Division of Animal Resources, Emory University, Lawrenceville, GA, USA;

c: Department of Population Health & Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

**Article**

**Data Dryad repository**

## Description of the data and file structure

Data are contained in the NMKO_Data_List.Rdata file. This can be read into R and preprocessed using Run-This-First_NMKO_Extract-Dataframes.R and will assemble 26 R objects. These objects are as follows:

Alf_NM_Codes = a dataframe with columns, in order, identifying the groups with a code, the alpha male ID (alfID) and the removed natal males' ID...