Abstracts of Presentations, Twenty-Second Annual Meeting, The American Society of Primatologists

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 166 KB
• Volume: 49
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0275-2565
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-2345(1999)49:1<23::aid-ajp2>3.0.co;2-v

✦ Synopsis

Recent research on Morgan Island has found that approximately 10% of rhesus monkeys growing up in that free-ranging colony develop interaction patterns that consistently result in escalating bouts of aggression with members of their natal troop. This tendency, along with a marked deficit in their serotonin metabolism, becomes apparent in late infancy, remains remarkably stable throughout development, and appears to be highly heritable. However, most males in the Morgan Island colony who exhibit this biobehavioral trait are expelled from their natal troop as juveniles and die prior to puberty, raising the obvious question as to how such a characteristic can remain in the colonys gene pool. The answer appears to lie in the maternal behavior of females who pass the relevant genes to their offspring. In particular, rhesus monkeys born with the short version of a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene are at risk for both serotonergic dysfunction and the development of impulsive aggressive tendencies, but only in the face of insecure early social attachments. In contrast, monkeys born with the same genetic polymorphism who develop secure attachment relationships with their mother show little if any impulsive aggression and normative patterns of serotonin metabolism throughout development. Moreover, data from other rhesus monkey colonies suggest that this gene-environment interaction can result in biobehavioral phenotypes that may be highly adaptive for specific environmental niches.