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closeRank and meat sharing?
Posted by HillCountry on 10 Apr 2009 at 22:17 GMT
We enjoyed discussing your paper in our journal club. We were curious as to whether there was a relationship between rank and meat sharing. We anticipated that there might be more of an impetus for lower ranking males to gain copulations through meat sharing. Did you find this relationship?
RE: Rank and meat sharing?
cristinagomes replied to HillCountry on 17 Apr 2009 at 13:36 GMT
I'm glad you enjoyed the paper.
This is an interesting point and I'll soon address it, however, it requires another analysis (with meat sharing as a response variable instead of copulation frequency) which I'm doing now and will write up as soon as I have the results.
However, I can make two comments on that point:
1. If there's a relationship between rank of the male and meat sharing it's not strong enough to have created multicolinearity problems, as I checked the diagnoses of the models and they all were fine.
2. Furthermore, although low ranking males would probably gain more from sharing meat with females, they would have to have the meat to share with them in the first place. So it wouldn't only be dependent on what they'd gain, but what they have to offer. Studies have shown that both participating in the hunt and rank of the male have a positive effect on meat consumption so the relationship between rank of the male and meat sharing is likely to be positive (contrary to what you're suggesting).
I hope I have managed to address your concerns to some extent and I would be happy to hear any other comments you have.