Sex and friendship in a multilevel society: behavioural patterns and associations between female and male Guinea baboons.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Goffe, Adeelia S. Zinner, Dietmar Fischer, Julia
Abstract	One key question in social evolution is the identification of factors that promote the formation and maintenance of stable bonds between females and males beyond the mating context. Baboons lend themselves to examine this question, as they vary in social organisation and male-female association patterns. We report the results from the first systematic observations of individually identified wild female Guinea baboons. Guinea baboons live in a multilevel society with female-biased dispersal. Although several males could be found within 5 m of females, each female chiefly associated with one “primary” male at the 2 m distance. Social interactions occurred predominantly with the primary male, and female reproductive state had little influence on interaction patterns. The number of females per primary male varied from 1 to 4. During the 17-month study period, half of the females transferred between different males one or multiple times. A subset of females maintained weaker affiliative nonsexual relationships with other “secondary” males. Units composed of primary males with females, and occasional secondary males, apparently form the core of the Guinea baboon society. The social organisation and mating patterns of Guinea and hamadryas baboons may have a common evolutionary origin, despite notable differences in relationship quality. Specifically, Guinea baboon females appear to have greater leverage in their association patterns than hamadryas baboon females. Although we cannot yet explain the lack of overt male control over females, results generally support the notion that phylogenetic descent may play an important role in shaping social systems.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00265-015-2050-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC4748025&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	03405443
Journal	Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology [Behav Ecol Sociobiol]
Volume Number	70
DOI	10.1007/s00265-015-2050-6
PubMed Central reference number	PMC4748025
PubMed reference number	26900211
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publisher Date	2016-01-22
Publisher Place	Berlin/Heidelberg
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. © The Author(s) 2016
Subject Keyword	Papio papio Intersexual relationships Mating system Pair bond Social organisation
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics