Till death (or an intruder) do us part: intrasexual-competition in a monogamous Primate
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Fernandez-Duque&Huck2013_Till ...
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University of Pennsylvania, Department of AnthropologyCentro de Ecologia Aplicada del Litoral, CONICET
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2013
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Polygynous animals are often highly dimorphic, and show large sex-differences in the degree of intra-sexual competition and aggression, which is associated with biased operational sex ratios (OSR). For socially monogamous, sexually monomorphic species, this relationship is less clear. Among mammals, pair-living has sometimes been assumed to imply equal OSR and low frequency, low intensity intra-sexual competition; even when high rates of intra-sexual competition and selection, in both sexes, have been theoretically predicted and described for various taxa. Owl monkeys are one of a few socially monogamous primates. Using long-term demographic and morphological data from 18 groups, we show that male and female owl monkeys experience intense intra-sexual competition and aggression from solitary floaters. Pair-mates are regularly replaced by intruding floaters (27 female and 23 male replacements in 149 group-years), with negative effects on the reproductive success of both partners. Individuals with only one partner during their life produced 25% more offspring per decade of tenure than those with two or more partners. The termination of the pair-bond is initiated by the floater, and sometimes has fatal consequences for the expelled adult. The existence of floaters and the sporadic, but intense aggression between them and residents suggest that it can be misleading to assume an equal OSR in socially monogamous species based solely on group composition. Instead, we suggest that sexual selection models must assume not equal, but flexible, context-specific, OSR in monogamous species.Citation
Till Death (Or an Intruder) Do Us Part: Intrasexual-Competition in a Monogamous Primate 2013, 8 (1):e53724 PLoS ONEJournal
PLoS ONEDOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0053724Additional Links
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053724Type
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1932-6203ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1371/journal.pone.0053724
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