DOI: 10.5061/dryad.5086f
title: Data from: Cooperative personalities and social niche specialisation in female meerkats

description: The social niche specialization hypothesis predicts that group-living
 animals should specialize in particular social roles to avoid social
 conflict, resulting in alternative life-history strategies for different
 roles. Social niche specialization, coupled with role-specific
 life-history trade-offs, should thus generate between-individual
 differences in behaviour that persist through time, or distinct
 personalities, as individuals specialize in particular nonoverlapping
 social roles. We tested for support for the social niche specialization
 hypothesis in cooperative personality traits in wild female meerkats
 (Suricata suricatta) that compete for access to dominant social roles. As
 cooperation is costly and dominance is acquired by heavier females, we
 predicted that females that ultimately acquired dominant roles would show
 noncooperative personality types early in life and before and after role
 acquisition. Although we found large individual differences in repeatable
 cooperative behaviours, there was no indication that individuals that
 ultimately acquired dominance differed from unsuccessful individuals in
 their cooperative behaviour. Early-life behaviour did not predict social
 role acquisition later in life, nor was cooperative behaviour before and
 after role acquisition correlated in the same individuals. We suggest that
 female meerkats do not show social niche specialization resulting in
 cooperative personalities, but that they exhibit an adaptive response in
 personality at role acquisition.
description: babysitting
 dataindivdiualSessions:
 number of sessions individual babysat for the litter, totalGroupSessions:
 number of sessions the group babysat for that litter, lnAge: natural log
 of the individual's age in days, condition: relative mass of the
 individual for its age, groupSize: the average group size of the group for
 the babysitting period, individualID: code for individual, group: code for
 group, litter: code for babysat litter, dominanceStatus: whether the
 individual was dominant during the babysitting period, everDominant:
 whether the individual became dominant in its lifetimebsData.txtprovisioning dataindivdiualFeeds: number of pup times individual fed to the litter, totalGroupFeeds: number of times the group fed to that litter, lnAge: natural log of the individual's age in days, condition: relative mass of the individual for its age, groupSize: the average group size of the group for the provisioning period, totalObservationTime: total time the group was observed for the provisioning period, individualID: code for individual, group: code for group, litter: code for litter, dominanceStatus: whether the individual was dominant during the babysitting period, everDominant: whether the individual became dominant in its lifetimefyData.txtguarding dataindividualBouts: number of times the individual went on raised guard during the month, totalGroupBouts: total number of times any group member went on raised guard during the month, lnAge: the natural log of the individuals age, condition: the relative mass of the individual for its age, groupSize: the average group size of the group for the month, proportionPregnant: the proportion of the month the individual was pregnant, totalObservationTime: the total time the group was observed for that month, individualID: code for the individual, group: code for the group, monthYear: code for the month within the year, dominanceStatus: the proportion of days an individual was dominant during the month, everDominant: whether the individual ever became dominant within its lifetimergData.txt