UC San Diego

All social animals face similar problems regarding intragroup competition over access to resources, which can lead to aggressive conflicts, and are therefore expected to have evolved mechanisms for managing the costs of conflict. Reconciliation, post-conflict affiliation between former opponents, and consolation, post-conflict affiliation directed at victims of aggression by third- parties, are two of these mechanisms and have been demonstrated widely in nonhuman primates. The Valuable Relationships hypothesis (VR) argues that individuals with valuable relationships are more likely to reconcile conflicts. VR rests on the assumption that conflict damages relationships and reconciliation serves to repair that damage. Most studies support VR but this Relationship Repair hypothesis (RR) remains untested, and while the post-conflict behavior (PCB) of chimpanzees has been widely examined, less is known about PCB in bonobos. This dissertation serves as a test of VR and RR and data presented here also examine third-party initiated interactions with aggressors during conflict, which have not been reported in bonobos. Analyses of the patterns of conflict management in the San Diego Zoo bonobo colony are inconsistent with both VR and RR. Overall, the group had a low rate of reconciliation (23.6% of conflicts reconciled), a low CCT (corrected conciliatory tendency; 6.71%), and there was no relationship between reconciliation and relationship quality or other relevant variables (sex of conflict participants, conflict intensity or context). Reconciled conflicts were less likely to be followed by continued aggression on the same day than were unreconciled conflicts. However, analysis of long-term patterns of interaction (10 days following conflicts) shows inconsistent support for RR. In the 10 days following unreconciled conflicts, there was no decrease in affiliation compared to baseline rates, which suggests the precipitating conflict did not damage the relationship. Similarly, in the 10 days following unreconciled conflicts, there was no change in the rate of aggression. The data presented here are more consistent with the Relationship Security hypothesis (RS), which argues that if reconciliation functions to repair damaged social bonds, then secure relationships may not be damaged by conflict and therefore would not require reconciliation, while insecure relationships would be more likely to be damaged by conflict and therefore more likely to reconcile. Consolation has been well-studied in the primate conflict management literature. Less understood are third-party initiated interactions with aggressors during conflicts. The data presented here serve as a test of the four main hypotheses about third-party initiated interactions with aggressors: adults will be most motivated to offer affiliation to aggressors or interfere non-aggressively in conflicts to promote social stability, gain dominance or mating benefits, or to promote self-protection by affiliating with frequent aggressors. None of these hypotheses were supported by the analysis presented here. Nearly all of the third-party initiated interactions with aggressors during conflicts were initiated by immature individuals and were directed at one adult male