Extreme weather events radically alter ecosystems. When ecological damage persists, selective pressures on individuals can change, leading to phenotypic adjustments. For group-living animals, social relationships may be a mechanism enabling adaptation to ecosystem disturbance. Yet whether such events alter selection on sociality and whether group-living animals can, as a result, adaptively change their social relationships remain untested. We leveraged 10 years of data collected on rhesus macaques before and after a category 4 hurricane caused persistent deforestation, exacerbating monkeys’ exposure to intense heat. In response, macaques demonstrated persistently increased tolerance and decreased aggression toward other monkeys, facilitating access to scarce shade critical for thermoregulation. Social tolerance predicted individual survival after the hurricane, but not before it, revealing a shift in the adaptive function of sociality.

中文翻译：

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生态干扰改变了社会关系的适应性效益


极端天气事件从根本上改变了生态系统。当生态破坏持续存在时，个体的选择压力可能会发生变化，导致表型调整。对于群居动物来说，社会关系可能是适应生态系统干扰的一种机制。然而，这些事件是否会改变对社会性的选择，以及群居动物是否能够因此适应性地改变它们的社会关系，这些都尚未得到检验。我们利用了 10 年来在 4 级飓风造成持续森林砍伐、加剧猴子暴露在高温下的恒河猴前后收集的数据。作为回应，猕猴表现出持续增强的耐受性并减少了对其他猴子的攻击性，从而有助于获得对体温调节至关重要的稀缺阴凉处。社会宽容可以预测飓风过后的个体生存，但不能预测飓风之前的个体生存，这揭示了社会适应性功能的转变。