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. 2018 Oct 9:7:e33781.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.33781.

Personality links with lifespan in chimpanzees

Drew M Altschul  1   2   3 , William D Hopkins  4   5 , Elizabeth S Herrelko  6   7 , Miho Inoue-Murayama  8   9 , Tetsuro Matsuzawa  10   11   12 , James E King  13 , Stephen R Ross  14 , Alexander Weiss  1   2
Affiliations

Personality links with lifespan in chimpanzees

Drew M Altschul et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Life history strategies for optimizing individual fitness fall on a spectrum between maximizing reproductive efforts and maintaining physical health over time. Strategies across this spectrum are viable and different suites of personality traits evolved to support these strategies. Using data from 538 captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) we tested whether any of the dimensions of chimpanzee personality - agreeableness, conscientiousness, dominance, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness - were associated with longevity, an attribute of slow life history strategies that is especially important in primates given their relatively long lives. We found that higher agreeableness was related to longevity in males, with weaker evidence suggesting that higher openness is related to longer life in females. Our results link the literature on human and nonhuman primate survival and suggest that, for males, evolution has favored the protective effects of low aggression and high quality social bonds.

Keywords: Pan troglodytes; chimpanzees; ecology; epidemiology; global health; life history; longevity; personality; sex differences.

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Conflict of interest statement

DA, WH, EH, MI, TM, JK, SR, AW No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Survival curves of captive and wild chimpanzees.
Lines indicate survival probability of each group over the lifespan. The solid lines represent the captive population used in this study and the dashed line corresponds to a wild group (Bronikowski et al., 2011). The shaded areas indicated the 95% confidence region for reach group.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Personality’s relationship with age and sex.
Each panel shows the personality scores of a specific dimension for all individuals in a scatterplot against age on the left, and on the right with bean plots showing the distribution of scores split by sex (females are on the left, males on the right). Relationships between age and each personality dimensions are illustrated in the figure supplements.
Figure 2—figure supplement 1.
Figure 2—figure supplement 1.. Generalized additive model of dominance and age at personality rating.
The carpet and scatter plot present the distribution of observations over which the best fit smoothed regression line is plotted with the 95% confidence region.
Figure 2—figure supplement 2.
Figure 2—figure supplement 2.. Generalized additive model of extraversion and age at personality rating.
The carpet and scatter plot present the distribution of observations over which the best fit smoothed regression line is plotted with the 95% confidence region.
Figure 2—figure supplement 3.
Figure 2—figure supplement 3.. Generalized additive model of conscientiousness and age at personality rating.
The carpet and scatter plot present the distribution of observations over which the best fit smoothed regression line is plotted with the 95% confidence region.
Figure 2—figure supplement 4.
Figure 2—figure supplement 4.. Generalized additive model of agreeableness and age at personality rating.
The carpet and scatter plot present the distribution of observations over which the best fit smoothed regression line is plotted with the 95% confidence region.
Figure 2—figure supplement 5.
Figure 2—figure supplement 5.. Generalized additive model of neuroticism and age at personality rating.
The carpet and scatter plot present the distribution of observations over which the best fit smoothed regression line is plotted with the 95% confidence region.
Figure 2—figure supplement 6.
Figure 2—figure supplement 6.. Generalized additive model of openness and age at personality rating.
The carpet and scatter plot present the distribution of observations over which the best fit smoothed regression line is plotted with the 95% confidence region.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. Conditional inference tree diagram indicating variables influencing survival.
Bottom panes indicate the survival curves of and number of chimpanzees in each sub-group. Sub-groups were split based on the growth of the tree and decision criteria are indicated below each node. Splits in numeric variables (e.g. agreeableness) are by standard deviations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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