The effect of male tenure and female mate choice on paternity in free‐ranging Japanese macaques

Abstract

In this study, the paternity of all the infants born in 2002 and 2003 in a free-ranging Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) group at Arashiyama in Kyoto, Japan, was analyzed in relation to males' age, dominance rank, and tenure and females' mate choice. The fathers of 20 out of 23 infants were determined by DNA analyses. Central adult (high-ranking) males sired two infants, whereas peripheral adult (low-ranking) males sired 14 infants. Young males sired only one infant. Among adult males, tenure was the most dominant factor that negatively affected male reproductive success. The mating behavior of females who gave birth was also analyzed. The number of male copulations in the peri-fertilization period was positively correlated with the number of infants that they sired. Females copulated with central males with a long tenure only when fertilization was unlikely or impossible. The females probably avoided insemination by males with a long tenure and selected males with a shorter tenure as their mating partners during the ovulation period.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 51 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.