People who are more socially integrated or have higher socio-economic status live longer. Recent studies in non-human primates show striking convergences with this human pattern: female primates with more social partners, stronger social bonds or higher dominance rank all lead longer lives. However, it remains unclear whether social environments also predict survival in male non-human primates, as it does in men. This gap persists because, in most primates, males disperse among social groups, resulting in many males who disappear with unknown fate and have unknown dates of birth. We present a Bayesian model to estimate the effects of time-varying social covariates on age-specific adult mortality in both sexes of wild baboons. We compare how the survival trajectories of both sexes are linked to social bonds and social status over the life. We find that, parallel to females, male baboons who are more strongly bonded to females have longer lifespans. However, males with higher dominance rank for their age appear to have shorter lifespans. This finding brings new understanding to the adaptive significance of heterosexual social bonds for male baboons: in addition to protecting the male's offspring from infanticide, these bonds may have direct benefits to males themselves.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution of the primate ageing process'.

社会融合度越高或社会经济地位越高的人寿命越长。最近对非人类灵长类动物的研究表明，这种模式与人类模式有着惊人的相似之处：拥有更多社会伙伴、更强的社会联系或更高的统治地位的雌性灵长类动物都寿命更长。然而，目前尚不清楚社会环境是否也能像男性一样预测雄性非人类灵长类动物的生存。这种差距之所以持续存在，是因为在大多数灵长类动物中，雄性分散在社会群体中，导致许多雄性以未知的命运消失，出生日期也未知。我们提出了一个贝叶斯模型来估计随时间变化的社会协变量对两性野生狒狒特定年龄成年死亡率的影响。我们比较了两性的生存轨迹如何与一生中的社会纽带和社会地位联系起来。我们发现，与雌性狒狒相似，与雌性关系更紧密的雄性狒狒寿命更长。然而，与同龄人相比，具有较高统治地位的男性的寿命似乎较短。这一发现为雄性狒狒异性社会纽带的适应性意义带来了新的认识：除了保护雄性狒狒的后代免遭杀婴之外，这些纽带可能对雄性狒狒本身有直接的好处。

本文是主题“灵长类动物衰老过程的进化”的一部分。