View article

Dominance is a primary determinant of social dynamics and resource access in social animals. Recent studies show that dominance is also reflected in the gene regulatory profiles of peripheral immune cells. However, the strength and direction of this relationship differs across the species and sex combinations investigated, potentially due to variation in the predictors and energetic consequences of dominance status. Here, we investigated the association between social status and gene expression in the blood of wild meerkats (Suricata suricatta; n = 113 individuals), including in response to lipopolysaccharide, Gardiquimod (an agonist of TLR7, which detects single‐stranded RNA in vivo) and glucocorticoid stimulation. Meerkats are cooperatively breeding social carnivores in which breeding females physically outcompete other females to suppress reproduction, resulting in high reproductive skew. They …