Temporal patterns of den use suggest polygamous mating patterns in an obligate monogamous mammal

Kotze, Robynne; Bennett, Nigel C.; Cameron, Elissa Z.; Vries, J. L. de; Marneweck, David G.; Pirk, Christian Walter Werner; Dalerum, Fredrik

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.09.035

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…This is the first study to present reproductive hormone data for wild aardwolves. Our results support previous observations of the aardwolf as a strictly seasonal breeder (Koehler and Richardson, 1990;Marneweck et al, 2012;Richardson 1987;Sliwa, 1996) with seasonal fluctuations in fA concentrations in males and two observed litters during the wet season. However, although progestagen production also varied between seasons in females, fE concentrations were not consistently elevated during the dry season, which contains the mating activity.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…For females, we further found a seasonal variation in the spatial distribution of foraging locations where they foraged further from home range borders in the wet compared to the dry season. This may be caused by a central tendency towards maternal dens when offspring are present (Joshi et al, 1999;Kotze et al, 2012). An alternative, not mutually exclusive explanation could be that the observed seasonal variation in foraging locations was caused by decreased food availability around foraging dens after dry season.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Benfontein covers 11,400ha of semiarid terrain and lies within a transitional zone between dry Karoo, grassland and Kalahari thornveld (Schultze and McGee, 1978). The study area has a semiarid climate, with a dry season comprising March to August and a wet season September to February (Kotze et al 2012). The reserve has hosted the majority of previous studies on aardwolf (De Vries et al, 2011;Ganswindt et al, 2012;Kotze et al, 2012;Richardson, 1985;Sliwa, 1996;Sliwa and Richardson, 1998).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Once an individual was located we followed it by a 4x4 vehicle from a distance of >100m until the animal became habituated to our presence. We remote injected aardwolves with a standard dose of 36.0mg ketamine hydrochloride and 0.6mg medetomidine hydrochloride using a CO 2 -powered remote injection system (Kotze et al 2012). The darted animals took 5-10 minutes to become anaesthetized, and aardwolves were kept anaesthetized for 45-60 minutes.…”

Section: Study Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aardwolves have been described as obligately monogamous socially (Koehler and Richardson, 1990;Richardson, 1985), as a result of the necessity for a high level of paternal care caused by the increased need for females to forage away from offspring during lactation (Richardson and Coetzee, 1988). However, aardwolves have been observed to engage in a high frequency of extrapair copulations (Richardson, 1987b;Sliwa, 1996), and Kotze et al (2012) suggested that the temporal utilisation of dens corresponded more closely with predictions from polygamous mating than from social monogamy. Therefore, the aardwolf is an appealing candidate for evaluating how social versus genetic mating systems associate with sex differences in behaviour and endocrine fluctuations in a mammal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Behavioural and endocrine correlates to the aardwolf mating system

et al. 2015

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It is now widely recognized that mating systems contain both social and genetic components, where social components describe patterns of social associations while genetic components reflect patterns of mating activities. In many species these two components do not coincide. If the level of sexual asymmetry differs between these two components, for instance in monogamous pairs with high levels of infidelity, each component may impose different selection pressures on behavioural and physiological characteristics. However, we have limited knowledge of how social and genetic components influence behaviour and physiology. The aardwolf (Proteles cristata) is a small insectivorous hyaenid, which has been described as socially monogamous but sexually promiscuous. In this study, we evaluated if aardwolf space use, scent marking, foraging behaviour and endocrine fluctuations relate to predictions from social monogamy or polygamous mating. Our results did not show sex differences in behaviour or physiology that would be consistent with predictions from polygamous mating, and we suggest that social mate associations may regulate the observed endocrine and behavioural parameters more than actual mating patterns in this species. Such an interpretation would suggest that the fitness effect of promiscuous mating may be low, since it appears to impose little selection pressure on mating related behaviour. We stress that it is then unclear how promiscuous mating is maintained in this socially monogamous species.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Behavioural and endocrine correlates to the aardwolf mating system

et al. 2015

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Reproductive behavior in the Hyaenidae

East

2024

Reference Module in Life Sciences

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Spatial and temporal dimensions to the taxonomic diversity of arthropods in an arid grassland savannah

Dalerum

Vries

Pirk

et al. 2017

Journal of Arid Environments

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Quantifying the drivers of biodiversity variation is a key topic in contemporary ecology. While the geographic distribution of biodiversity is broadly determined by water and energy, local environmental conditions may be important. We valuated the relative effects of spatial and temporal variation on taxonomic diversity of ground living arthropod communities in central South Africa. Seasonal climate variation was a major driver of arthropod abundance, but seasonal effects differed between habitats. We did not find any evidence for modular community structures, even across different habitats, or any evidence for a nested pattern across seasons. Instead, we observed a spatial nestedness which was only partly related to specific habitats. Our results suggest that neutral processes had influenced arthropod community structure, but also that very local processes may have been pivotal in determining local and regional arthropod diversity. Such processes may not necessarily have been neutral, but could have been caused by niche deterministic processes acting at scales smaller the distinct habitat classes we used for our study. We further suggest that alterations in climate likely will have substantial effects on the spatial and temporal distribution of arthropod diversity in this arid region.

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Temporal patterns of den use suggest polygamous mating patterns in an obligate monogamous mammal

Cited by 9 publications

References 53 publications

Behavioural and endocrine correlates to the aardwolf mating system

Behavioural and endocrine correlates to the aardwolf mating system

Reproductive behavior in the Hyaenidae

Spatial and temporal dimensions to the taxonomic diversity of arthropods in an arid grassland savannah

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