Do Democratic Candidates Suffer ‘Audience Costs’?

The literature on “domestic audience costs” focuses mainly on threats made by democratic leaders to signal credible commitments. Yet it largely ignores pledges made by democratic candidates along the campaign trail. Candidates often engage in a rhetorical “arms race” with each other to project resolve to voters on issues of international relations, whether it is protecting the country, fighting terrorism, or standing up to foreign aggression. Yet, unlike other audience costs, candidates face a conflict of preferences based on competing time horizons. That is, the short-term incentives (winning votes) for taking more hard-line stances can outweigh the long-term costs (getting boxed in by pledges made). Many campaign promises are mere bluster, but some can signal to foreign leaders a candidate’s future willingness to fight or back down, with important implications for crisis bargaining down the road. Using this framework, this paper analyzes the candidates’ rhetoric regarding foreign affairs during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and the subsequent policy decisions made by President Barack Obama

The futility of buffer zones in international politics

Buffer zones as a concept have a long history. Despite their frequent occurrence in international relations past and present, however, they have been treated in passing by scholars and policymakers alike, and then usually from a purely historical perspective. Their importance in conflict management, third-party intervention and power politics are not adequately mirrored in scholarly research. This article seeks to remedy this lapse by re-introducing the buffer zone as a tool of international conflict management in a new and systematic fashion. In this article, we survey buffer zones, their conceptual roots and characteristics, and illustrate our theoretical findings with an array of different examples—predominantly from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In so doing, we make three fundamental arguments about buffer zones

Female philopatry and dominance patterns in wild geladas

Cercopithecines have a highly conserved social structure with strong female bonds and stable, maternally inherited linear dominance hierarchies. This system has been ascribed to the pervasiveness of female philopatry within the typical multi-male, multi-female social groups. We examined the relationship between female philopatry, dominance hierarchies, and reproduction in geladas ( Theropithecus gelada ), a species with an unusual multi-leveled society. During a 4-year field study on a wild population in the Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia, we observed 14 units across two bands of geladas that underwent a number of events, such as male takeovers and female deaths, which could potentially disrupt female relationships and unit structure. First, we corroborate earlier reports that gelada females are natally philopatric: we observed no interunit migrations, and the female mortality rate was comparable to that of philopatric baboons (suggesting all female disappearances were indeed deaths). Second, contrary to previous reports, data from this long-term study show that geladas exhibit the linear and stable dominance hierarchies typical of other Cercopithecines. Moreover, female ranks appear to be maternally inherited. Third, we found no evidence that alpha females aggressively target the lowest ranking individuals, nor did rank confer clear reproductive advantages to dominant females within our 4-year observation period. As such, geladas fit the allostatic load model [Goymann & Wingfield, Animal Behaviour 67:591–602, 2004]. Our study confirms the importance of female philopatry in the kin-based Cercopithecine dominance system. Am. J. Primatol. 73:422–430, 2011. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/83472/1/20916_ftp.pd

Testing extraction and storage parameters for a fecal hormone method

Four experiments were conducted to test different aspects of a “field-friendly” fecal hormone extraction method that utilizes methanol extraction in the field followed by storage on C18 solid-phase extraction cartridges. Fecal samples were collected from geladas ( Theropithecus gelada ) housed at the Bronx Zoo, and the experiments were conducted in a laboratory setting to ensure maximum control. The experiments were designed to either simulate the conditions to which fecal samples are subjected during fieldwork or improve on an existing protocol. The experiments tested the relationship between fecal hormone metabolite preservation/recovery and: (1) the amount of time a sample is stored at ambient temperature; (2) the number of freeze/thaw cycles a sample undergoes; (3) the effectiveness of different extraction solutions; and (4) the effectiveness of different cartridge washes. For each experiment, samples were assayed by radioimmunoassay for fecal glucocorticoid (GC) and testosterone (T) metabolites. Results for each of the experiments were as follows. First, storage at ambient temperature did not affect hormone levels until 4 weeks of storage, with significant increases for both GC and T metabolites at 4 weeks. Second, hormone levels significantly decreased in samples after two freeze/thaw cycles for GCs and six freeze/thaws cycles for T. Third, for both GCs and T, hormone extraction using various methanol solutions was significantly higher than using 100% ethanol. Finally, using a 20% methanol solution to wash cartridges significantly increased GC levels but had no effect on T levels. These results suggest that, when utilizing C18 cartridges for fecal steroid storage, researchers should consider several methodological options to optimize hormone preservation and recovery from fecal samples. Am. J. Primatol. 72:934–941, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78062/1/20859_ftp.pd

Juvenile social relationships reflect adult patterns of behavior in wild geladas

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113724/1/ajp22443.pd

Juggling Priorities: Female Mating Tactics in P hayre's Leaf Monkeys

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91119/1/ajp22004.pd

Identifying wildlife reservoirs of neglected taeniid tapeworms : non-invasive diagnosis of endemic Taenia serialis infection in a wild primate population

Despite the global distribution and public health consequences of Taenia tapeworms, the life cycles of taeniids infecting wildlife hosts remain largely undescribed. The larval stage of Taenia serialis commonly parasitizes rodents and lagomorphs, but has been reported in a wide range of hosts that includes geladas (Theropithecus gelada), primates endemic to Ethiopia. Geladas exhibit protuberant larval cysts indicative of advanced T. serialis infection that are associated with high mortality. However, non-protuberant larvae can develop in deep tissue or the abdominal cavity, leading to underestimates of prevalence based solely on observable cysts. We adapted a non-invasive monoclonal antibody-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect circulating Taenia spp. antigen in dried gelada urine. Analysis revealed that this assay was highly accurate in detecting Taenia antigen, with 98.4% specificity, 98.5% sensitivity, and an area under the curve of 0.99. We used this assay to investigate the prevalence of T. serialis infection in a wild gelada population, finding that infection is substantially more widespread than the occurrence of visible T. serialis cysts (16.4% tested positive at least once, while only 6% of the same population exhibited cysts). We examined whether age or sex predicted T. serialis infection as indicated by external cysts and antigen presence. Contrary to the female-bias observed in many Taenia-host systems, we found no significant sex bias in either cyst presence or antigen presence. Age, on the other hand, predicted cyst presence (older individuals were more likely to show cysts) but not antigen presence. We interpret this finding to indicate that T. serialis may infect individuals early in life but only result in visible disease later in life. This is the first application of an antigen ELISA to the study of larval Taenia infection in wildlife, opening the doors to the identification and description of infection dynamics in reservoir populations

Testosterone related to age and life-history stages in male baboons and geladas

AbstractDespite significant advances in our knowledge of how testosterone mediates life-history trade-offs, this research has primarily focused on seasonal taxa. We know comparatively little about the relationship between testosterone and life-history stages for non-seasonally breeding species. Here we examine testosterone profiles across the life span of males from three non-seasonally breeding primates: yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus or P. hamadryas cynocephalus), chacma baboons (Papio ursinus or P. h. ursinus), and geladas (Theropithecus gelada). First, we predict that testosterone profiles will track the reproductive profiles of each taxon across their respective breeding years. Second, we evaluate age-related changes in testosterone to determine whether several life-history transitions are associated with these changes. Subjects include males (>2.5 years) from wild populations of each taxon from whom we had fecal samples for hormone determination. Although testosterone profiles across taxa were broadly similar, considerable variability was found in the timing of two major changes: (1) the attainment of adult levels of testosterone and (2) the decline in testosterone after the period of maximum production. Attainment of adult testosterone levels was delayed by 1 year in chacmas compared with yellows and geladas. With respect to the decline in testosterone, geladas and chacmas exhibited a significant drop after 3 years of maximum production, while yellows declined so gradually that no significant annual drop was ever detected. For both yellows and chacmas, increases in testosterone production preceded elevations in social dominance rank. We discuss these differences in the context of ecological and behavioral differences exhibited by these taxa