DOI: 10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv5g
title: Data from: The role of between-group signalling in the evolution of primate ornamentation

description: Gregarious mammals interact to varying degrees and in a variety of ways
 with neighbouring groups. Since navigating this wider social environment
 via conventional means (social knowledge) may be challenging, we
 hypothesize that between-group socio-spatial dynamics have exerted strong
 selection on phenotypic markers of individual identity, quality and
 competitive ability. Ornaments are sexually selected decorative traits
 with far-reaching signalling potential. Here, we examined the links
 between sexual dimorphism in ornamentation, home range use and encounter
 rates across 144 primate species in a Bayesian framework. We show that
 home range overlap (shared space among neighbours), an indicator of the
 complexity of between-group interactions (but not necessarily male-male
 competition), is positively associated with dimorphism in ornamentation.
 We find no clear effect for between-group encounter rates. We also find
 that inter-group interactions were less agonistic when there was greater
 home range overlap. Taken together, these findings indicate that ornaments
 play a hitherto underappreciated role in signalling to conspecifics
 outside the realms of their home groups.
description: Raw data were collected from the literature, phylogenetic trees
 obtained from http://vertlife.org/data/mammals.
description: # The role of between-group signalling in the evolution of primate
 ornamentation
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv5g](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv5g) This dataset contains information on sexually dimorphic ornaments, social context and between-group behavior across 144 primate species, extracted from the literature and used for phylogenetic comparative analyses. ## Description of the data and file structure Associated files: *VertTree_Primates_10k_trees.nex*         10,000 phylogenies for all 317 available primate species, as provided by [http://vertlife.org/data/mammals](http://vertlife.org/data/mammals) *Data_primate_ornaments.csv*                Data for all species of this study *Script_primate_ornamentation.R*          R code for the analyses  Description of variables in data file: | Column | Description | | :---------------------------------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | PhyloVertTree | Species name corresponding to the phylogeny | | Species | Species name as in other sources | | Family | Primate family | | Population | Study population | | PercentHomeRangeOverlap | Percent home range overlap | | Encounters | Inter-group encounters, raw data | | EncounterRatePerDay | Daily inter-group encounter rate | | PercentAgonistic | Percent agonistic encounters among those observed | | NGroupsObserved | Number of groups observed in original study | | StudyDuration | Duration of observational study | | Notes | Notes | | References | Reference for inter-group data | | GroupSize | Mean group size | | SSD | Sexual size dimorphism (male body mass / female body mass) | | MatingSystem | Mating system characterization | | REF group size | Reference for group size | | REF SD | Reference for SSD | | TotalOrnamentDimorphismNoDichromatism | Ornamentation score based on all traits considered | | TotalDimorphismConservativeNoDichromatism | Conservative ornamentation score using simple presence/absence of scructural and/or color dimorphism for each of three body parts (head, trunk/limbs and rump/anogenital area) | | TotalPelageDimorphismNoDichromatism\_head\_body | Ornamentation score for pelage dimorphism in head and body areas | | TotalGenitalDimorphism | Ornamentation score for genital dimorphism | | TotalOtherDimorphism | Ornamentation score for other ornamentation traits | | REF ornamentation | Reference for ornamentation scores | Note: Throughout data file, NA means 'no data available' ## Sharing/Access information Phylogenetic data were derived from: * [http://vertlife.org/data/mammals](http://vertlife.org/data/mammals) ## Code/Software All R code is provided and was run in R version 4.3.