Where females are widely dispersed, the best strategy for a male is to stick with one female, defend her, and make sure that he sires all her offspring. In short, a male's best strategy is to be monogamous.
-Professor Tim Clutton-Brock
Social monogamy, where one breeding female and one breeding male are closely associated with each other over several breeding seasons, appears to have evolved as a mating strategy, new research reveals. It was previously suspected that social monogamy resulted from a need for extra parental care by the father.
The comparative study, by University of Cambridge researchers Dieter Lukas and Tim Clutton-Brock, shows that the ancestral system for all mammalian groups is of females living in separate ranges with males defending overlapping territories, and that monogamy evolved where males were unable to monopolise and defend multiple females. The research is published in the journal Science.
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Image: The socially monogamous dik-dik, a small antelope that lives in Africa.
Credit: Peter Brotherton
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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