Female Dominanceand Social Structure in Alaotrangentle Lemurs

Lemur social systems have the striking social feature, that adult females consistently evoke submissive behaviour of adult males. In the Alaotran gentle lemur, Hapalemur griseus alaotrensis, however, female dominance has not been studied yet. Here we conŽ rm female dominance over males on the basis of a 5-month Ž eld study of the social behaviour of four groups, in the Lake Alaotra marshland of eastern Madagascar. Further, we found that dominant individuals initiated aggressive interactions signiŽ cantly more often than lowerranking ones, they initiatedgroupmovementsmore often and higher-rankingindividualswere groomedmore often. The spatial conŽ guration was remarkable, since individualswere closer in space to those more distant in rank.