Behavioral Differences During and Outside Intergroup Encounters in Colobus vellerosus Located at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary Kayla Tellez*; Eva Wikberg, PhD; Sydney Self; Edward Zamora; Lori Sheeran, PhD; April Binder, PhD Project Mentor(s): April Binder, PhD; Eva Wikberg, PhD; Lori Sheeran, PhD Behaviors during intergroup encounters may provide insight into how an individual prioritizes resource defense. We explored behavioral differences between the presence and absence of intergroup encounters in male white-thighed black-and-white colobus monkeys ( Colobus vellerosus ) at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary (BFMS) in central Ghana. We used 5- to 10-minute-long continuous focal sampling of males in four groups to record focal animal vigilance, grunts, and their interactions with each other and males outside the focal groups ( N = 46 intergroup male focals, N = 202 non-intergroup male focals). We also used ad libitum sampling to record the start, end, and presence of intergroup encounters. We analyzed eight different behaviors using an unpaired two-tailed t-test with Welch’s correction (95% CI) on each behavior’s relative frequency (RF) and relative duration (RD) in GraphPad Prism. The behaviors vigilance (RF p = 0.0071; RD p = 0.0016) and displace (RF p = 0.0039; RD p = 0.0052) are significant during intergroup encounters. Aggressive behaviors contact fight (N=1 to within-group female) and chase ( N = 3 to other-group males) only occurred during intergroup encounters. Display behaviors open mouth (RF p = 0.5574, RD p = 0.3383) and stiff leg (RF p = 0.3818, RD p = 0.2993) did not differ significantly between intergroup and non-intergroup encounters. These results may suggest that display behaviors are important to signal a male’s fighting ability, quality, and to intimidate opponents both within and between groups. Current studies are underway to determine intergroup familiarity and kinship to investigate behavioral differences based on kin selection and the dear enemy and nasty neighbor hypotheses. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation (May 20, 9:30am–5:00pm) Keywords: Intergroup Encounters, Stress-Indicative Behavior, Resource Defense SOURCE Form ID: 105
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