Can females by-pass the dominance order?
Dubuc, Constance*,1, Chapais, Bernard1, 1 Universit de Montral, Montral, Qubec, Canada ABSTRACT- Producer-scrounger models state that social foraging groups are composed of producers, who invest time and energy to find resources, and scroungers, who usurp discoveries from producers. Applied to despotic species, dominance rank should strongly influence tactical choices. Since being the first to reach a clumped feeding site is the only way to ensure a share, low-ranking individuals should be producers, while since excluding others carries no cost for high-ranking individuals, they should be scroungers. Some authors predicted that this game should exist in despotic primate species, whereas others rather expect arrival order to be positively correlated to dominance order in these species. Indeed, social retaliation can be postponed in primates and thus dominance order by-passing may be more costly than in birds. The aim of the present study is to provide an initial verification of the prod
