DOI: 10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn935
title: Data from: The dynamics of dominance in a ‘despotic’ society

description: Dominance hierarchies are a key feature in the dynamics of animal social
 groups, playing a crucial role in fostering group stability. Despite often
 being viewed as static, persistent linear structures, hierarchies are
 fundamentally dynamic and can change over time due to ecological
 conditions, demographic changes and ontogenetic development. There are
 numerous methods used to construct hierarchies and quantify individual
 dominance rank, however, methods to capture the dynamics of a hierarchy
 across time have only recently been developed. As such, relatively little
 is known about the longitudinal hierarchy dynamics in many social species,
 including non-human primates and the timescale at which these hierarchy
 dynamics play out. Here we consider the longitudinal hierarchy dynamics
 across a four-year period in a large group of rhesus macaques. We
 investigated group- and individual-level predictors of active rank
 dynamics, or dynamics that arise from rank reversals. We found that,
 despite rhesus macaques being considered to have relatively stable
 hierarchies, there was significant active rank mobility in both males and
 females, even in the face of limited resource competition. Female rank
 change was not solely driven by matrilineal structure or demographic
 processes and females may also opportunistically ascend in rank. Further,
 we found strong links between rank certainty and hierarchy dynamics with
 periods of high hierarchy instability associated with low mean dominance
 certainty. Lastly, we found limited evidence of associations between
 periods of high active rank dynamics and social global network structure.
 This suggests more localised dynamics during hierarchy instability are at
 play rather than widescale network reorganisation. Together, these results
 stress the importance of considering social context in rank dynamics,
 illustrate the dynamic nature of macaque dominance rank and further
 highlight the opportunistic nature of the species.
description: Data were collected on a single social group (formed in 2003) of
 rhesus macaques (<em>Macaca mulatta</em>) housed in a 0.5-acre
 outdoor corral from March 2016 to November 2019. Behavioural observations
 were focused on all animals 3 years and involved the collection of
 aggressive, submissive, and affiliative behaviour. Dominanace ranks were
 caluclated in 90-day blocks and longitudinal hierarchy dynamics (Strauss
 and Holekamp 2019) were calculated across 14 time periods. Agonistic data
 were used to construct social networks for each time point, and average
 degree centrality and centralisation were extracted for each time
 period.
description: # Data and R Code for: The dynamics of dominance in a 'despotic'
 society
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn935](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn935) ## Description of the data and file structure All data used are contained in the rank_dynamics_data.csv file. This file contains rank dynamics calculations as well as individual- and group-level predictors. **Variables**: * Period: study period number * Id: animal ID * Sex: male/female * Age: animal age in years * Group size: number of individuals in the group in that time period * delta.active: active rank dynamics * rank.decile * dc: dominance certainty * sd: dominance certainty standard deviation * centralization: network-level centralization * average_degree: average degree of network * delta.active.scaled: active rank dynamics scaled by group size (for fig. 2 only) * delta.passive.scaled: passive rank dynamics scaled by group size (for fig. 2 only) Missing values (NA) in the delta.active, delta.active.scaled and delta.passive.scaled columns indicate periods where no hierarchy dynamics can be calculated (i.e. an individual's first study period). These are filtered out during analysis but contained in the dataset.  ## Code/Software All analytical code is contained in the "rank dynamics.Rmd" file. ## Version changes **April-2025:** Rank dynamics recalculated to remove 4 individuals from their final data bin to rectify inaccurate inclusion. Minor variable naming fixes for clarity in "rank dynamics.Rmd" file. "delta.active" column added to "rank_dynamics_data.csv" which was excluded in previous version.