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Data from: Delineating connectivity and quality of peer–peer prepubescent rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) relationships, by examining coupled social behaviors

Pritchard, Alexander J.1; Bonnell, Tyler R.2; Chakraborty, Bidisha1; Blersch, Rosemary A.1; McCowan, Brenda1; Vandeleest, Jessica J.1

Research facility: California National Primate Research Center
Published Oct 27, 2025 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ncjsxkt71

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Oct 27, 2025 version files 458.26 KB

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Abstract

Infant development is relatively extended in primates, with early life experiences having lifetime implications for individuals’ social competence and circumstances. Therefore, lifelong trajectories can be informed by a nuanced understanding of who individuals connect with (i.e., connectivity) and how invested they are in those connections (i.e., quality) during development. Though a simple premise, in principle, the practice of examining social connectivity and quality relies on a nuanced understanding of how prepubescent monkeys shift their behavioral repertoire over time. Such shifts involve the same putative partners that may recur over time. We focused on measuring peer-peer relationships through the first three years of life for two birth cohorts of 49 rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), while in their large outdoor housed mixed-sex home group. We recorded five social behaviors, allocated into monthly bins, and then built multiplex temporal networks to concatenate these bins into four temporal partitions. We then examined the auto- and cross-correlations of five social behaviors using a multivariate multiple response time series model to understand the behavioral dynamics of relationship connectivity and quality. We reinforced known principles of relationship formation by examining the effect of ego and alter traits, including demographics and assortativity. Coupled dynamics suggest that proximity broadly subsumes social dynamics (i.e., inclusive of aggression), while contact subsumes prosocial dynamics (i.e., exclusive of aggression). Directed behaviors did not show evidence of concordance with each other across time. Overall, these results highlight the dynamic nature of social development across multiple behaviors, underscoring how early social choices shape the formation, stability, flexibility, and long-term maintenance of relationships.