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Socio-genetic correlates of unbiased sex dispersal in a population of black capuchin monkeys (Sapajus nigritus)

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Abstract

Most social mammal species exhibit male-biased dispersal. Sex bias in dispersal leads to a higher degree of relatedness among individuals of the philopatric sex, thus an atypical dispersal pattern might lead to deviations in the typical within-group kinship structure. Kinship, in turn, influences patterns of social interactions, as widely evident by kin-biased behaviors. We investigated the link between dispersal, relatedness structure, and sociopositive interactions established by adult females of black capuchin monkeys (Sapajus nigritus) living in a population that experiences female dispersal, an unusual pattern for capuchin monkeys. The study was conducted in Parque Estadual Carlos Botelho (PECB), within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. We addressed dispersal and relatedness patterns by genotyping 20 adults of 3 groups across 9 microsatellite loci. We also sampled the monkeys’ behavior and compared spatial association frequencies and rates of grooming among same- and opposite-sex dyads. There was no difference between males and females in genetic parameters; both males and females show low coefficients of relatedness indicating that neither sex is consistently philopatric. The mean pairwise coefficient of relatedness for co-resident females was not higher than that for co-resident males. Compared to other populations of capuchin monkeys, female bond was weak, as evident by lower spatial association frequencies, reduced rates of grooming and lack of correlation between coefficients of relatedness and measures of dyadic sociopositive interactions. Our findings thus confirm that female dispersal is a habitual process in the capuchin population of PECB, and that, as expected, dispersal by females strongly influences the relatedness structure of the population as well as the affiliative relationships among female groupmates.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Instituto Florestal de São Paulo and José Carlos Maia for permission to conduct the research at PECB. We especially thank Prof. Dr. Pedro Manoel Galetti Junior for permission of using the LabBMC (Laboratório de Biodiversidade Molecular e Conservação), and Eraldo Vieira for his assistance in the field. We are grateful to Dr. Jessica Lynch Alfaro for her helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript and for English review. We are also thankful for improvements provided by two anonymous reviewers. Financial support for this study was provided by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior/CAPES and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo/FAPESP (09/50182-2 and 09/51589-9).

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  1. Departamento de Psicologia Experimental, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Marcos Tokuda & Patrícia Izar

  2. Parque Zoológico Municipal Quinzinho de Barros, Rua Teodoro Kaisel, 883, Vila Hortência, Sorocaba, SP, CEP 18020-268, Brazil

    Marcos Tokuda

  3. Universidade Santo Amaro, São Paulo, Brazil

    Milene M. Martins

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  1. Marcos Tokuda
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Tokuda, M., Martins, M.M. & Izar, P. Socio-genetic correlates of unbiased sex dispersal in a population of black capuchin monkeys (Sapajus nigritus). acta ethol 21, 1–11 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-017-0277-0

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