Publication Date:
2013-07-31
Description:
The evolution of social monogamy has intrigued biologists for over a century. Here, we show that the ancestral condition for all mammalian groups is of solitary individuals and that social monogamy is derived almost exclusively from this social system. The evolution of social monogamy does not appear to have been associated with a high risk of male infanticide, and paternal care is a consequence rather than a cause of social monogamy. Social monogamy has evolved in nonhuman mammals where breeding females are intolerant of each other and female density is low, suggesting that it represents a mating strategy that has developed where males are unable to defend access to multiple females.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lukas, D -- Clutton-Brock, T H -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2013 Aug 2;341(6145):526-30. doi: 10.1126/science.1238677. Epub 2013 Jul 29.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. dl384@cam.ac.uk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23896459" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Female
;
Male
;
*Marriage
;
Population Density
;
*Sexual Behavior, Animal
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
