Grooming among female Japanese macaques: distinguishing between reciprocation and interchange

Grooming among female Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) was studied to test some predictions derived from the application of biological market theory. Contrary to expectations, Japanese macaques did not time match the duration of grooming episodes, their degree of reciprocation was not related to rank distance, and they did not distribute their immediately reciprocated and nonreciprocated grooming in different ways. However, they did reciprocate total amount of grooming received. These results suggest that the use of the temporal patterning of grooming (immediately reciprocated versus nonreciprocated grooming) to distinguish the different classes of traders predicted by the theory (reciprocal versus interchange traders) is unsuccessful. Copyright 2003.