Tolerance to unfamiliar conspecifics varies with social organization in female African mole-rats

Intolerance to familiar conspecifics characterises solitary mole-rats and distinguishes them from social ones. However, no study has compared the patterns of tolerance to unfamiliar conspecifics. Theoretically, both solitary and social species should react similarly and show intolerance to unfamiliar same-sex conspecifics, unless the evolution of grouping has favoured higher tolerance to conspecifics among the social species. Our study compares tolerance to unfamiliar conspecifics in four African mole-rat species exhibiting varying degrees of sociality. Dyadic encounters between female unfamiliar conspecifics were performed in a neutral arena, and the assessment of social tolerance was based on both behavioural observations of amicable contact behaviour as opposed to aggression and avoidance behaviour and the assessment of a stress response to the encounter measured as an increase in plasma cortisol concentrations. Our results show that the two highly social species and the solitary one presented similar high levels of agonistic behaviours during encounters with unfamiliar conspecifics. Nevertheless, all three social species displayed social tolerance and did not show a stress arousal during encounters with unfamiliar conspecifics, a pattern that contrasted significantly with that evidenced in the solitary species. The results suggest that physiological and behavioural characteristics allow a higher tolerance to unfamiliar conspecifics in the social as opposed to the solitary mole-rat, and the adaptive value of these characteristics are discussed. Finally, we discuss why constraints on social tolerance may be an important limiting factor to take into account in theories concerning the evolution of grouping.