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Mating behavior of adolescent male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda

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Abstract

Male mating tactics vary extensively in many primates. Some variation occurs because adolescent males often are sexually active but cannot invest heavily in mating effort because of their limited ability to compete directly with adults and because they are still investing in growth; consequently, most of their mating attempts may be surreptitious and/or with females whose fecundity is low. Chimpanzees (Pan trogolodytes) have a complex mating system: most copulations occur between estrous females with full sexual swelling and multiple males in group settings where the potential for sperm competition is high, but males sometimes mate-guard females, and sometimes male–female pairs mate exclusively with each other while avoiding other males during “consortships.” Among other factors, dominance ranks, coalition formation, and variation in male–female association influence male mating and reproductive success. Mating effort increases from adolescence into prime adulthood. At Gombe and Mahale, adolescent males copulated more with nulliparous than with parous females, and mostly when females were unlikely to be ovulating, partly because of low adult male interest in nulliparous females and partly because of aggression from or avoidance of adult males. Adolescents thus had low probabilities of siring infants. However, adolescents are known to have gained some paternity at Gombe and in other populations, and their mating behavior deserves more study. I present data on mating by adolescent males in an unusually large chimpanzee community at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda. Adolescents at Ngogo also copulated more with nulliparous than parous females and mostly copulated outside of periovulatory periods. Also, they directed less aggression at estrous females than did adult males. However, they gained lower shares of copulations than reported for Gombe and Mahale, regardless of female parity, and received more aggression from adult males. These differences might partly reflect the influence of variation in the number of males per community on male mating tactics.

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Acknowledgments

I thank the Uganda Wildlife Authority and the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology for permission to conduct research in Kibale National Park and Makerere University for permission to use the facilities of the Makerere University Biological Field Station. I thank G.I. Basuta, J. Kasenene, and the Field Station staff for logistical support. Godfrey Mbabazi, Lawrence Ndagizi, Adolph Magoba, and Alfred Tumusiime provided expert field assistance, Jeremiah Lwanga provided invaluable assistance with all aspects of research at Ngogo, and John Mitani provided invaluable collaboration on research at Ngogo and in establishing and maintaining the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project. This research was supported by the US National Science Foundation (SBR-9253590, BCS-0215622), the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and Yale University. The manuscript benefited from comments by Anne Pusey, Juichi Yamagiwa, and one anonymous reviewer.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208277, New Haven, CT, 06520-8277, USA

    David P. Watts

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Correspondence to David P. Watts.

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Watts, D.P. Mating behavior of adolescent male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda. Primates 56, 163–172 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-014-0453-z

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