Mating systems, philopatry and dispersal in birds and mammals

ilbstract. Autocorrelation is a very general statistical property of ecological variables observed across geographic space; its most common forms are patches and gradients. Spatial autocorrelation. which comes either from the physical forcing of environmental variables or from community processes, presents a problem for statistical testing because autocorrelated data violate the assumption of independence of most standard statistical procedures. The paper discusses first how autocorrelation in ecological variables can be described and measured. with emphasis on mapping techniques. Then. proper statistical testing in the presence of autocorrelation is briefly discussed. Finally. ways are presented of explicitly introducing spatial structures into ecological models. Two approaches are proposed: in the raw-data approach, the spatial structure takes the form of a polynomial of the x and .v geographic coordinates of the sampling stations; in the matrix approach. the spatial structure is introduced in the form of a geographic distance matrix among locations. These two approaches are compared in the concluding section. A table provides a list of computer programs available for spatial analysis.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1939924.pdf

Spatial Autocorrelation: Trouble or New Paradigm?

The authors review the theory of romantic, or pair-bond, attachment as it was originally formulated by C. Hazan and P. R. Shaver in 1987 and describe how it has evolved over more than a decade. In ...

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Adult Romantic Attachment: Theoretical Developments, Emerging Controversies, and Unanswered Questions

This review considers the behavioral, ecological, and reproductive characteristics of mammals exhibiting monogamy, i.e., mating exclusivity. From a discussion of the life histories of selected species of monogamous primates, carnivores, rodents and ungulates, several trends emerge. Two forms of monogamy occur, Type I, facultative, and Type II, obligate. The selective pressures leading to these two forms of monogamy may have been different. Facultative monogamy may result when a species exists at very low densities, with males and females being so spaced that only a single member of the opposite sex is available for mating. Obligate monogamy appears to occur when a solitary female cannot rear a litter without aid from conspecifics, but the carrying capacity of the habitat is insufficient to allow more than one female to breed simultaneously within the same home range. Within both types of monogamy, the following traits are typically seen: (1) adults show little sexual dimorphism either physically or behaviorally: (2) the adult male and female exhibit infrequent socio-sexual interactions except during the early stages of pair bond formation. Additional trends specific to mammals exhibiting obligate monogamy are: (1) the young exhibit delayed sexual maturation in the presence of the parents, and thus only the adult pair breeds; (2) the older juveniles aid in rearing young siblings; and (3) the adult male (father) aids in the rearing of young by any or all of the following: carrying, feeding, defending, and socializing offspring.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2824293

Monogamy in mammals

Male mammals show a diverse array of mating bonds, including obligate monogamy, unimale and group polygyny and promiscuity. These are associated with a wide variety of different forms of mate guarding, including the defence of feeding and mating territories, the defence of female groups and the defence of individual receptive females. Female mating bonds include long-term monogamy, serial monogamy, polyandry and promiscuity. Both male and female mating behaviour varies widely within species. Variation in male mating behaviour is related to the effect of male assistance in rearing young and to the defensibility of females by males. The latter is, in turn, related to female ranging behaviour and to the size and stability of female groups. Much of the variation in mammalian mating bonds and systems of mate guarding can be attributed to differences in these three variables.

Mammalian mating systems.

In the broad perspective chemical communication has been the subject of several recent reviews (Wilson 138; Johnston, Moulton & Turk 59; Wilson 137). The present review will be more restrictive; we will deal with one as­ pect of chemical communication in one class of vertebrates, i.e., olfaction in the Mammalia. For the purposes of this review, olfactory communication is defined as the process whereby a chemical signal is generated by a presumptive sender and transmitted (generally through the air) to a presumptive receiver who by means of adequate receptors can identify, integrate, and respond (either be­ haviorally or physiologically) to the signal. It is assumed that the sender-re­ ceiver relationship is in some way the result of natural selection so that signal production by the sender leads to an increased likelihood that the sender or the species will benefit from the transmission of the message; the whole pro­ cess of communication is subject to the pressures of natural selection. A chemical signal which serves to trigger a response in a conspecific re­ ceiver is generally referred to as a pheromone (Wilson 137)-in contrast to an allomone, which is a signal used to communicate with a member of an­ other species (Brown 16). By thus defining olfactory communication, we have eliminated from consideration in this review problems of food selection, habitat selection, etc, which do involve the chemical senses but which result from different sorts of interactions of the organism with the environment. Olfactory communication has certain advantages, since it allows a re­ ceiver to assess certain parameters of its social environment very specifically. There is a disadvantage to chemical communication since in general there is no inherent directionality in the propagation of the signal and, in order to orient toward the source of chemical information, the presumptive receiver must make use of a gradient. The "active space" of a chemical signal has been the subject of extensive discussion by Wilson (137) and Wilson & Bos­ sert (139). A tremendous advantage of using chemical signals instead of vi­ sual and auditory ones is that chemical traces persist for some period of time

Olfactory Communication in Mammals

A variety of approaches have been used to understand the evolution of male parental care. General frameworks are provided by Trivers’ theory of sexual selection (1972), the theory of life history strategies (see Horn, 1978; Stearns, 1976) and game theory (Grafen and Sibly, 1978; Maynard Smith, 1977). The factors invoked to explain male parental investment have varied with the level of analysis; intrinsic biological factors such as internal versus external fertilization (Dawkins and Carlisle, 1976; Ridley, 1978) or the capacity to invest (Orians, 1969) have been used to illuminate differences between large taxonomic units such as the vertebrate classes; ecological factors such as harshness (Wilson, 1975), richness (Jenni, 1974), and unpredictability (Pitelka et al., 1974) have all been invoked to explain the presence of unusual levels of male investment in smaller taxonomic units.

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Devra G. Kleiman

Papers

Monogamy in mammals

Olfactory Communication in Mammals

The Evolution of Male Parental Investment in Mammals

Comparisons of canid and felid social systems from an evolutionary perspective.

Advances in the study of mammalian behavior