gradPSYCH - September 2011 - (Page 14)

RESEARCH ROUNDUP Innovative research from today’s psychology graduate students. BY MICHAEL PRICE • gradPSYCH staff When the leader’s away, monkeys will stray It’s hard out there for a male gelada, the baboon-like monkey that lives in the Ethiopian highlands. Once males hit sexual maturity, most are booted out of the colony, although a lucky dominant male is chosen by gelada females to stick around to mate with and become the group leader. That would seem to leave less dominant males at a genetic dead end, but Noah SnyderMackler, a comparative psychology graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, has discovered that some manage to mate anyway. Snyder-Mackler spent 12 months in northern Ethiopia over the past three years studying gelada mating habits and found an interesting loophole for subordinate males. While most dominate male geladas reign solo over social groups of 200 or more, about a third enlist a few subordinate males to help hunt for food and defend the group from predators or other males trying to take over their territory. The price for this extra help? While the leaders are away hunting, mating or just roaming, these subordinates “sneakily mate with the females,” Snyder-Mackler says. It’s possible that dominant males tolerate these trysts because geladas have a relatively short gestation period combined with long tenures by group leaders, so letting a subordinate father offspring and losing one’s own chance to mate with a particular female for five months might be an acceptable tradeoff for some dominant males, SnyderMackler says. The sex lives of geladas may be more complicated than researchers previously thought. 14 • gradPSYCH • September 2011 

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of gradPSYCH - September 2011

GradPSYCH - September 2011
Contents
Interns: Be sure to track your hours
Students often notice but only sometimes blow the whistle on peers’ ethical violations
Psychology student spearheads coming-out project
Internship application costs rise
Odd Jobs
Media Picks
Chair’s Corner
Research Roundup
Matters to a Degree
The new academic job market
Applier beware
Does TV accurately portray psychology?
Safer travels
How to handle a tough audience
Free Money for Education
Meet your new advocates
Bulletin Board
Jobs, internships, postdocs and other opportunities
The Back Page

gradPSYCH - September 2011

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