Female Reproductive Seasonality and Male Influxes in Wild Mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx)
| Autor: | Shun Hongo, Etienne François Akomo-Okoue, Yoshihiro Nakashima, Fred Loïque Mindonga-Nguelet |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
biology media_common.quotation_subject 05 social sciences Sexual swelling Anatomy Seasonality medicine.disease 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Mandrillus sphinx Animal ecology biology.animal Dry season medicine Camera trap 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Animal Science and Zoology Primate 050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology Reproduction Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Demography media_common |
| Zdroj: | International Journal of Primatology. 37:416-437 |
| ISSN: | 1573-8604 0164-0291 |
| Popis: | The correlates of variation in the number of males in primate groups form a long-standing question in primatology. We investigated female reproductive seasonality and the numbers of males in groups of wild mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) in a 25-month camera-trap survey with 160 camera locations in Moukalaba-Doudou National Park, Gabon. We used 1760 videos to analyze group composition, including the presence of females with newborn infants and with sexual swellings, the number of males present in groups, and male spatial positioning in groups. Female reproduction was seasonal, with a peak in the number of newborns in the mid-rainy season and a peak in the number of females with sexual swellings in the early dry season. The number of males in the group increased in the dry season, with a much greater increase in the number of mature males (sevenfold) than in submature males (twofold). The peak number of mature males, but not submature males, in the group lagged significantly behind the peak in the number of females with sexual swellings, suggesting that submature males enter groups before mature males and/or that mature males stay in the group longer after the peak of females with sexual swellings. Mature, but not submature, males appeared frequently near females with sexual swellings. In conclusion, we found a clear relationship between the presence of receptive females and the number of males in the group, and evidence that male competitive ability influences male strategies. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|