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More than friends? Behavioural and genetic aspects of heterosexual associations in wild chacma baboons

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Abstract

In mammals, fathers are facultative caretakers, and male care is expected to evolve only if it is directed towards related young. Yet, in several promiscuous primate societies, males seem to care for infants despite a presumably low paternity confidence. In cercopithecines, cohesive associations (‘friendships’) between a lactating female and an adult male are frequent and provide the female and her infant with protection against various sources of aggression, including infanticide. However, the benefits gained by males through such relationships remain unclear, in part, because the relatedness between males and their protected infants has rarely been examined. Moreover, little is known about the nature of the cues underlying kin discrimination by males in societies where females mate polyandrously. In this study, we combine behavioural and genetic data from wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) in Namibia to investigate (1) whether males are related to their friend’s infant and (2) whether similarity between the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genotype of males and infants (potentially perceived through odour phenotype) favours the establishment of friendships. We first show that males share close genetic ties with their friend’s infants, most often by having sired the infant. Secondly, we find that male–infant MHC (Class II–DRB) similarity, in contrast to paternity, does not predict male–infant associations. Overall, our results clarify the nature of the evolutionary benefits gained by males in these heterosexual associations, which can be considered as true paternal care. However, the proximate mechanisms underlying paternity recognition remain to be identified.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Camara, H. Kelstrup, L. De Raad, R. Fleming, J. Kamps, H. Marshall, H. Peck and A. King for their assistance in the field. We are also grateful to S. Funk, A. Randall, A. Dillestone, H. Marshall, C. Staples, J. Osborn and M. Weill for their help with labwork and J. Wang and A. King for their help with parentage analysis and relatedness calculations. We thank the Swart family (2000–2006) and the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement (2006–2007) for their permission to work at Tsaobis Leopard Park, the Gobabeb Training and Research Centre for affiliation, and the Ministry of Environment and Tourism for their research permission in Namibia. Our capture and processing protocols were assessed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Zoological Society of London. We also confirm that we have adhered to the Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Behavioural Research and Teaching (Animal Behaviour 2006, 71:245–253) and the legal requirements of the country (Namibia) in which the work was carried out. This work was funded by a Natural Environment Research Council (UK) Project Grant and Advanced Fellowship awarded to GC, a Ministère de l’Education et de la Recherche (France) Studentship awarded to EH, and a Royal Society International Travel Grant awarded to both GC and EH. This paper is a publication of the ZSL Institute of Zoology’s Tsaobis Baboon Project. Contribution ISEM 2009-125.

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Correspondence to Elise Huchard.

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Communicated by P. Kappeler

Elise Huchard and Alexandra Alvergne contributed equally to this study.

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S1

Genetic analyses (DOC 54 kb)

Table S2

Characteristics of the 17 loci used for parentage analyses, together with the test results for deviation from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (using exact U score tests). Ho observed heterozygosity, He expected heterozygosity, NS non-significant, ***p < 0.001 (DOC 56 kb)

Table S3

Demographic composition of the six baboon groups sampled for genetics (DOC 37 kb)

Table S4

Assignment of male friends as natal or non-natal in their current troop of residence. All the males listed were already present in the troop at the start of this study. Residency status is defined by the presence in the group for more than a year. See text S1 for details regarding assignments based on genetic data (when demographic information is missing) (DOC 31 kb)

Figure S5

Distributions of pairwise relatedness (TL) between juveniles and females (DOC 122 kb)

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Huchard, E., Alvergne, A., Féjan, D. et al. More than friends? Behavioural and genetic aspects of heterosexual associations in wild chacma baboons. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 64, 769–781 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-009-0894-3

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