Adverse experiences during early life exert important effects on development, health, reproduction, and social bonds, with consequences often persisting across generations. A mother's early life experiences can impact her offspring's development through a number of pathways, such as maternal care, physiological signaling through glucocorticoids, or even intergenerational effects like epigenetic inheritance. Early life adversity in female yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus) predicts elevated glucocorticoids, reduced sociality, shortened lifespan, and higher offspring mortality. If baboon mothers with more early life adversity, experience poorer condition and struggle to provide for their offspring, this could contribute to the persisting transgenerational effects of adversity. Here, we examined the effects of mothers' early life adversity on their maternal effort, physiology, and offspring survivability in a population of olive baboons, Papio anubis. Mothers who experienced more adversity in their own early development exerted greater maternal effort (i.e., spent more time nursing and carrying) and had higher glucocorticoid metabolites than mothers with less early life adversity.Offspring of mothers with more early life adversity had reduced survivability compared to offspring of mothers with less early life adversity. There was no evidence that high maternal social rank buffered against the effects of early life adversity. Our data suggest early life experiences can have lasting consequences on maternal effort and physiology, which may function as proximate mechanisms for intergenerational effects of maternal experience.

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Social bonds enhance fitness in many group-living animals, generating interest in the processes that create individual variation in sociality. Previous work on female baboons shows that early life adversity and temperament both influence social connectedness in adulthood. Early life adversity might shape sociality by reducing ability to invest in social relationships or through effects on attractiveness as a social partner. We examine how females’ early life adversity predicts sociality and temperament in wild olive baboons, and evaluate whether temperament mediates the relationship between early life adversity and sociality. We use behavioural data on 31 females to quantify sociality. We measure interaction style as the tendency to produce grunts (signals of benign intent) in contexts in which the vocalization does not produce immediate benefits to the actor. Early life adversity was negatively correlated with overall sociality, but was a stronger predictor of social behaviours received than behaviours initiated. Females who experienced less early life adversity had more benign interaction styles and benign interaction styles were associated with receiving more social behaviours. Interaction style may partially mediate the association between early life adversity and sociality. These analyses add to our growing understanding of the processes connecting early life experiences to adult sociality.

Adverse experiences during early life exert important effects on development, health, reproduction, and social bonds, with consequences often persisting across generations. A mother’s early life experiences can impact her offspring’s development through a number of pathways, such as maternal care, physiological signaling through glucocorticoids, or even intergenerational effects like epigenetic inheritance. Early life adversity in female yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus) predicts elevated glucocorticoids, reduced sociality, shortened lifespan, and higher offspring mortality. If baboon mothers with more early life adversity, experience poorer condition and struggle to provide for their offspring, this could contribute to the persisting transgenerational effects of adversity. Here, we examined the effects of mothers’ early life adversity on their maternal effort, physiology, and offspring survivability in a population of olive baboons, Papio anubis. Mothers who experienced more adversity in their own early development exerted greater maternal effort (i.e., spent more time nursing and carrying) and had higher glucocorticoid metabolites than mothers with less early life adversity. Offspring of mothers with more early life adversity had reduced survivability compared to offspring of mothers with less early life adversity. There was no evidence that high maternal social rank buffered against the effects of early life adversity. Our data suggest early life experiences can have lasting consequences on maternal effort and physiology, which may function as proximate mechanisms for intergenerational effects of maternal experience.