| dc.description.abstract | Understanding the evolutionary roots of social behaviour and its implications for human health has encouraged multidisciplinary efforts in the recent decade. Long-term study systems have proven an invaluable resource to achieve this goal by allowing the integration of demographic and behavioural information with health data. However, this is an emergent research area and consequently, there are many gaps in knowledge that remain to be studied. In this thesis, I address some of these gaps in the understanding of the sociality-health-fitness interplay by studying a long-term population of free-ranging rhesus macaques Macaca mulatta. In the first chapter, I provide an overview of what have we learned about the health correlates of sociality in the last decades. I, specifically, examine how aspects of the social organisation and social structure of mammal species could influence or be influenced by health while also discussing the potential fitness implications of these links.
In the second chapter, I explore how social integration and social status correlate to several markers of immune function and immune activation. I demonstrate that social integration predicts immune activation possibly by reducing inflammation levels.
In the third chapter, I examine the role of affiliative relationships and social status on infection risk in the face of a major hurricane. I show that social status
predicts infection risk in this population and discuss the confounding effect of environmental changes on the sociality-health relationship.
In the fourth chapter, I demonstrate that social status and affiliative partners may promote health and survival by mitigating costs of competition quantified as injuries.
In the fifth chapter, I address the socioecological drivers possibly explaining the occurrence of injuries in this population, integrating female and male reproductive strategies.
In the last chapter, I put all the results of this thesis into a wider context by discussing potential implications for the Cayo Santiago population and other mammal societies. | en_GB |
