Rodents

Future studies, however, will make progress by running across study sites and geographic regions to test functional hypotheses of baboon social evolution. As a case in point, one of the most prominent behavioural differences between baboon allotaxa lies in the occurrence of coalitionary behaviour among unrelated, reproductively competing males: this is a problem of real substance, because this kind of cooperation is rare in nature. These differences are resistant to the effects of local ecology, and are likely to have a genetic basis reflecting selection of the physiological responses that allow males to modulate their interactions with each other (for example, increased inhibition and tolerance, and reduced aggression). As the EU-funded taskforce INCORE recognises, the fact of these population differences in behaviour, in conjunction with our expanding knowledge of the baboon genome and its complicated phylogenetic history, presents us with a unique opportunity to investigate the genetic underpinnings of complex social behaviour.