Topic description:
Aggressive behavior has been the subject of intense research over the years. Evolutionary biologists and behavioral ecologists are still debating on the function of aggression, on its benefits and costs, and on the factors and contexts that may favor its occurrence. Reconciliation is thought to have evolved in primates and other social animals to limit the potentially disruptive effects that aggression may have on amicable social relationships among group members. In this talk I will focus on some factors that affect aggression and reconciliation within the group in nonhuman primates. Moreover, I will analyze a range of variables that may determine the type of participation in inter-group encounters of the various group members. Based on the findings of these studies, I will discuss some lines of further research that I would develop in the future.

Biographical note:
Bonaventura Majolo graduated at the University La Sapienza of Rome with a study on the effect of the mating season on mother-infant interactions in Japanese macaques. He then moved to Stirling, Scotland, for his Master in Psychology, where he studied the response of common marmosets to various foraging tasks and to the presence of unfamiliar conspecifics. His PhD, at Liverpool Jon Moores University, was on conflict management and inter-group interactions in wild non-provisioned Japanese macaques. Dr. Majolo has also studied baboons in South Africa and he is now a research associate at Paignton Zoo, Great Britain, where he is supervising various projects on social behavior and social learning in mammals and birds. His current research is mainly focused on the ecological and cognitive factors that affect cooperation and conflict management, and on developing models that may predict the behavior of animals in potentially competitive contexts.