Social costs of group life: Larger groups have less affiliative behavior and more social conflict

In wild female baboons (Papio cynocephalus × P. anubis), larger group size is linked to more agonistic interactions, fewer grooming interactions, and sparser social networks.

• Why it matters: Group size can change the balance of benefits and costs of sociality, but long-term evidence for how behavior shifts with group size in wild primates is limited.
• What they did: Using a long-term dataset, the study compared individuals across baboon groups of different sizes and tested how dyadic relationship patterns shift with group size.
• The result: As group size increases, dyads become more agonistic and less grooming-oriented, and individuals show more weak bonds with more partners, yielding weaker overall bonds and more conflict.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.