Table 1.
Effect of hierarchy stability and social dominance on hormone concentrations.
| Dependant variable: log fGC | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Variables* | b | Numerator df |
Denominator df |
F | Sig. |
| Intercept | 1 | 429.665 | 4758.378 | <0.001 | |
| Dominance rank | 0.0043 | 1 | 1578.129 | 5.390 | 0.020 |
| Alpha status | 0.0437† | 1 | 2334.854 | 9.134 | 0.003 |
| Hierarchy stability | −0.0182‡ | 1 | 2351.302 | 5.666 | 0.017 |
| Season | −0.0239§ | 1 | 2324.398 | 9.100 | 0.003 |
| Temperature | −0.0062∥ | 1 | 2337.664 | 0.393 | 0.531 |
| Age | 0.0034 | 1 | 522.355 | 2.153 | 0.143 |
| Dependant variable: log fT | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Variables* | b | Numerator df |
Denominator df |
F | Sig. |
| Intercept | 1 | 625.525 | 3891.482 | <0.001 | |
| Dominance rank | −0.0124 | 1 | 2374.909 | 29.102 | <0.001 |
| Alpha status | −0.0117† | 1 | 2360.698 | 0.473 | 0.492 |
| Hierarchy stability | 0.0146‡ | 1 | 2301.445 | 2.776 | 0.096 |
| Season | 0.0705§ | 1 | 2290.120 | 60.702 | <0.001 |
| Temperature | 0.0266∥ | 1 | 2294.284 | 5.481 | 0.019 |
| Age | −0.0249 | 1 | 1816.997 | 59.963 | <0.001 |
Statistically significant results appear in bold.
Factors that were not significant for either hormone were dropped. These included the interaction between rank and hierarchy stability (a fixed factor) and social group (a random factor). For the four categorical variables (Alpha Status, Hierarchy stability, Season and Temperature), a positive value of b indicates that the hormone concentration was higher
for the alpha male,
when the hierarchy was stable,
during the wet season,
in cooler months. The variable ‘Dominance Rank’ captures the linear component of the functional relationship between rank and the hormones; the binary variable ‘Alpha Status’ captures the non-linear component.