Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas

When mothers continue to support their offspring beyond infancy, they can influence the fitness of those offspring, the strength of social relationships within their groups, and the life-history traits of their species. Using up to 30 years of demographic data from 58 groups of gorillas in two study...

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Main Authors:	Robbins, Andrew M., Gray, Maryke, Breuer, Thomas, Manguette, Marie, Stokes, Emma J., Uwingeli, Prosper, Mburanumwe, Innocent, Kagoda, Edwin, Robbins, Martha M.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	The Royal Society 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5098995/

id	pubmed-5098995
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-50989952016-11-16 Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas Robbins, Andrew M. Gray, Maryke Breuer, Thomas Manguette, Marie Stokes, Emma J. Uwingeli, Prosper Mburanumwe, Innocent Kagoda, Edwin Robbins, Martha M. Biology (Whole Organism) When mothers continue to support their offspring beyond infancy, they can influence the fitness of those offspring, the strength of social relationships within their groups, and the life-history traits of their species. Using up to 30 years of demographic data from 58 groups of gorillas in two study sites, this study extends such findings by showing that mothers may also contribute to differences in social organization between closely related species. Female mountain gorillas remained with their sons for significantly longer than western gorillas, which may explain why male philopatry and multimale groups are more common among mountain gorillas. The presence of the putative father and other familiar males did not vary significantly between species, and we found only limited support for the socio-ecological theory that the distribution of adult males is influenced by the distribution of females. Within each gorilla species, variations in those distributions may also reflect the different stages in the typical life cycle of a group. Collectively, our results highlight the potentially far-reaching consequences of maternal support that extends beyond infancy, and they illustrate the opportunity to incorporate additional factors into phylogenetic analyses of variations in social organization, including studies of human evolution. The Royal Society 2016-10-19 /pmc/articles/PMC5098995/ /pubmed/27853570 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160533 Text en © 2016 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Robbins, Andrew M. Gray, Maryke Breuer, Thomas Manguette, Marie Stokes, Emma J. Uwingeli, Prosper Mburanumwe, Innocent Kagoda, Edwin Robbins, Martha M.
spellingShingle	Robbins, Andrew M. Gray, Maryke Breuer, Thomas Manguette, Marie Stokes, Emma J. Uwingeli, Prosper Mburanumwe, Innocent Kagoda, Edwin Robbins, Martha M. Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas
author_facet	Robbins, Andrew M. Gray, Maryke Breuer, Thomas Manguette, Marie Stokes, Emma J. Uwingeli, Prosper Mburanumwe, Innocent Kagoda, Edwin Robbins, Martha M.
author_sort	Robbins, Andrew M.
title	Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas
title_short	Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas
title_full	Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas
title_fullStr	Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas
title_full_unstemmed	Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas
title_sort	mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas
description	When mothers continue to support their offspring beyond infancy, they can influence the fitness of those offspring, the strength of social relationships within their groups, and the life-history traits of their species. Using up to 30 years of demographic data from 58 groups of gorillas in two study sites, this study extends such findings by showing that mothers may also contribute to differences in social organization between closely related species. Female mountain gorillas remained with their sons for significantly longer than western gorillas, which may explain why male philopatry and multimale groups are more common among mountain gorillas. The presence of the putative father and other familiar males did not vary significantly between species, and we found only limited support for the socio-ecological theory that the distribution of adult males is influenced by the distribution of females. Within each gorilla species, variations in those distributions may also reflect the different stages in the typical life cycle of a group. Collectively, our results highlight the potentially far-reaching consequences of maternal support that extends beyond infancy, and they illustrate the opportunity to incorporate additional factors into phylogenetic analyses of variations in social organization, including studies of human evolution.
publisher	The Royal Society
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5098995/
_version_	1613716518356385792

Mothers may shape the variations in social organization among gorillas

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