Social Bonds Enhance Reproductive Success in Male Macaques
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For animals living in mixed-sex social groups, females who form strong social bonds with other females live longer and have higher offspring survival [1-3]. These bonds are highly nepotistic, but sometimes strong bonds may also occur between unrelated females if kin are rare [2, 3] and even among postdispersal unrelated females in chimpanzees and horses [4, 5]. Because of fundamental differences between the resources that limit reproductive success in females (food and safety) and males (fertilizations), it has been predicted that bonding among males should be rare and found only for kin and among philopatric males [6] like chimpanzees [7-9]. We studied social bonds among dispersing male Assamese macaques (Macaca assamensis) to see whether males in multimale groups form differentiated social bonds and whether and how males derive fitness benefits from close bonds. We found that strong bonds were linked to coalition formation, which in turn predicted future social dominance, which influenced paternity success. The strength of males' social bonds was directly linked to the number of offspring they sired. Our results show that differentiated social relationships exert an important influence on the breeding success of both sexes that transcends contrasts in relatedness.
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Individuals who maintain long-lasting cooperative relationships have more offspring than those who do not.
“Crucially, there is evidence that individuals who maintain such cooperative relationships have more offspring than those who do not [8,10 -12].”
From Food sharing is linked to urinary oxytocin levels and bonding in related and unrelated wild chimpanzees (2014) · cites this paper as [12]
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- Authors
- Schülke, O., Bhagavatula, J., Vigilant, L., & Ostner, J.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Schülke, Oliver
- Venue
- Current Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2010-12
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 24
- Pages
- 2207-2210
- ISSN
- 0960-9822 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2043827317
- Cited by
- 555
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 38 · 2021: 45 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 81 · 2018: 40 · 2017: 44 · 2016: 29 · 2015: 32 · 2014: 37 · 2013: 39 · 2012: 17
- FWCI
- 32.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Current Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- GRO (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Keywords
- social bonds, Assamese macaque, Macaca assamensis, male reproductive success, paternity success, coalition formation, social dominance, multimale groups, nepotism, kin selection, interpersonal relationships
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Behavior, Animal, Female, Macaca, Male, Reproduction, Social Behavior, Thailand
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