Because female chimpanzees spend so much time alone, often going for a day or longer without seeing another female, this is unlikely to be important in this species. Because of the mosaic distribution of vegetation at Gombe, some female core areas are likely to contain higher quality food than others. In addition, because core areas overlap almost completely, a high ranking female may gain priority of access to preferred food sites in an overlap area. These modes of competition might explain why dominance behavior is less frequent in this species than some others and linear dominance hierarchies are hard to detect. In addition, clear dominance relationships may only be established between females whose core areas overlap, thus explaining the general lack of clearly defined linear dominance hierarchies.
More research is needed to understand how female chimpanzees achieve high rank.
Some females, such as GG, acquired high rank by their own aggressive behavior. Other females, such as PM, have gained high rank through their mother's support. The fact that alliances with kin are sometimes important makes it all the more striking that young female chimpanzees often disperse to other communities. Finally, if the considerable degree of reproductive skew observed in the Gombe chimpanzees also occurs in other populations, this has implications for the future genetic diversity of this endangered species. For the one mother with two mature daughters, we used the mean age of maturity.