Individual Factors Predicting the Disappearance and Reproductive Success of Vervet Monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus)

Social network analysis (SNA) is an increasingly popular method of quantifying social interactions and relating these to individual characteristics. However, few studies have considered how demographic events influence social networks and how social position affects fitness among species that live around humans. Using the gambit of the group and proximity data, I performed SNA on vervet monkeys to determine how social centrality predicted which individuals were more likely to disappear and to have infants that survived past one year. Older males with a lower or decrease in social centrality were more likely to disappear, where older males were more likely to emigrate, and individuals who decreased in their eigenvector centrality were more likely to have a human-related death. Females with a greater betweenness tended to have greater infant survival rates. Overall, emigration was influenced by natural history while human-related disappearances and reproductive success were mediated by social position.