Info: Zenodo’s user support line is staffed on regular business days between Dec 23 and Jan 5. Response times may be slightly longer than normal.

Published August 3, 2022 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Mandrill mothers associate with infants who look like their own offspring using phenotype matching

  • 1. Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier
  • 2. German Primate Center
  • 3. Projet Mandrillus, SODEPAL*
  • 4. SODEPAL-COMILOG*
  • 5. Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive

Description

Behavioral discrimination of kin is a key process structuring social relationships in animals. In this study, we provide a first example of discrimination towards non-kin by third-parties through a mechanism of phenotype matching. In mandrills, we recently demonstrated increased facial resemblance among paternally-related juvenile and adult females indicating adaptive opportunities for paternal kin recognition. Here, we hypothesize that mothers use offspring's facial resemblance with other infants to guide offspring's social opportunities towards similarly-looking ones. Using deep learning for face recognition in 80 wild mandrill infants, we first show that infants born to the same father or conceived during the tenure of the same alpha male resemble each other the most, independently of their age, sex or maternal origin, extending previous results to the youngest age class. Using long-term behavioral observations on association patterns and controlling for matrilineal origin, maternal relatedness and infant age and sex, we then demonstrate that, as hypothesized, mothers are spatially closer to infants that resemble their own offspring more, thereby facilitating associations among similar-looking infants. Using theoretical modeling, we describe a plausible evolutionary process whereby mothers gain fitness benefits by promoting nepotism among paternally related infants. This mechanism, that we call "second order kin selection", may extend beyond mother-infant interactions and has the potential to explain cooperative behaviors among non-kin in social species, including humans.

Notes

Funding provided by: Agence Nationale de la Recherche
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001665
Award Number: 17-CE02-0002

Funding provided by: Agence Nationale de la Recherche
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001665
Award Number: 20-CE02-0005-01

Funding provided by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659
Award Number: KA 1082-20-1

Files

facial_distances.csv

Files (207.8 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:9f07b4f170f6aaea932113acb75305c0
111.6 kB Preview Download
md5:df17aaf1172f780fc83c855f32113cc8
92.6 kB Preview Download
md5:eaae0a6ed62b9382c755845bb64e9e19
3.6 kB Preview Download