Relationship between male dominance rank and glucocorticoids (A) or testosterone (B) concentrations. The y axis represents the residuals of log-transformed hormone concentration obtained from a GLMM including age, environmental factors and hierarchy stability as fixed factors, male identity as a random factor (23). Each value represents the mean ± SE across male monthly averages. The dotted lines represent the regression lines determined using all the monthly male hormone values. N = number of monthly averages, N = number of males. Sample sizes in A and B are the same. Note that this visualization is not a substitute for the full statistical model results which are presented in table 1.

Relationship between male dominance rank and glucocorticoid (A, B) and testosterone (C, D) concentrations in stable and in unstable hierarchies, illustrating the similar relationships with dominance rank in both stable and unstable conditions (identified statistically as the absence of a significant interaction between dominance rank and stability; see table 1 and text). Separate GLMM models were created for each condition (stable and unstable) and each hormone. In each case, values on the Y axis represent residuals of log-transformed hormone concentrations from the respective GLMM model, which included age and environmental factors as fixed factors, and male identity as a random factor (23). Each plotted value represents the mean ± SE across male monthly averages. The dotted lines represent the regression lines determined using all the monthly male hormone values. N = number of monthly averages, N = number of males. Sample sizes in A and C and in B and D are the same. Inserts represent the alpha vs. beta comparison using the reduced dataset that included only alpha and beta males. Note that this visualization is not a substitute for the full statistical model results which are presented in table 1.

Differences between alpha and beta males in the proportion of challenges received, rate of grooming received, number of agonistic encounters and consort time. Each bar represents the mean ± SE of the difference between the alpha and beta male within a group-month (alpha value minus beta value). N = number of alpha-beta pairs. For each analysis, an alpha-beta pair is represented by a single value that represents the overall difference over time for that pair. Any pair is included if data were available for the pair for at least three months and if at least one member of the pair had a non-zero value during that time (23).