Sex differences in learning the allocation of social grooming in infant stumptailed macaques

Abstract

SummaryAmong primates, the intense mother-infant bond provides offspring with a lengthy period for learning from an experienced and reliable demonstrator. Since adult life differs for females and males, the expertise of mother may not be equally useful to both sexes of infant, particularly with regard to social relationships. Here, we report on differences between infant female and male stumptailed macaques in learning how to allocate social grooming, using their mothers as demonstrators. Infant females were significantly more socially precocious than males, starting at early ages to groom mothers. Throughout their first year of life, daughters showed more instances of mirroring mothers' behaviour than sons did. In addition, while grooming on their own, grooming durations of daughters to specific partners was significantly concordant with time devoted by mothers to such recipients. We suggest that daughters learn from their mothers how to distribute grooming amongst social companions, while sons primarily use mother as a secure platform to initiate socializing. These results lend support to the idea that mirroring equates with learning and leads to reinforcement of innate propensities for gender roles in primates.

Emergence of sex-segregated behavior and association patterns in juvenile spider monkeys

“…Grooming is the predominant form of affiliative social behavior within the primate order (Henzi & Barrett, 1999;Seyfarth, 1977), and in the majority of species females groom more frequently than males (Mitchell & Tokunaga, 1976). Additionally, in stump-tailed macaque, juveniles females groom mothers at an early age than males (Lee et al, 2010), and in chimpanzees, juvenile females maintain stronger spatial relationships with mothers than males (Pusey, 1983). Similar to the juveniles in this study, adult females spider monkeys typically use whinny vocalizations more often than males (Fedigan and Baxter, 1984).…”

“…squirrel monkeys: Biben, 1986; rhesus macaques: Hassett, Rupp, & Wallen, 2010; stump-tailed macaques: Lee, Mayagoitia, Mondragón-Ceballos, & Chiappa, 2010;long-tailed macaques: van Noordwijk, Hemelrijk, Herremans, & Sterck, 2002;chimpanzees: Lonsdorf et al, 2014;Murray et al, 2014;Pusey, 1983;humans: Pellegrini, 2004). For example, in my study, only juvenile females ever groomed other conspecifics, and these females had stronger grooming relationships with their mothers than juvenile males did.…”

Network analysis as a tool to understand social development in spider monkeys

“…However, within spider monkeys, grooming follows an atypical pattern in which grooming may occur at lower rates than other species typical affiliative behaviors such as the embrace (Aureli & Schaffner, 2008; Fedigan & Baxter, 1984; Schaffner & Aureli, 2005; Slater et al, 2007). For example, it is fairly common in primates to see high grooming rates between mother and offspring dyads (Lee, Mayagoitia, Mondragón‐Ceballos, & Chiappa, 2010; Nishida, 1988). However, this pattern was only the case for one mother–offspring dyad (i.e., Cleo–Cary) within our data set.…”

Social network inheritance and differentiation in wild baboons

“…P1b: while mother-offspring social networks will be positively correlated [8], the strength of the correlation will decrease with age as immatures become more independent from the mother [43]. The decrease will be greater for males than for females [61]. P1c: because the mother and maternal relatives have a royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R. Soc.…”

“…Finally, the development of social connections could depend on sex. In general, immature females spend more time with the mother and maternal relatives during development than males [ 57 , 58 ] (but see [ 59 ]), both in female-philopatric species (baboons [ 49 ]; geladas Thercopithecus gelada [ 60 ]; macaques [ 61 ]; vervet monkeys [ 62 ]) and male-philopatric species (chimpanzees [ 63 ]; spider monkeys A. geoffroyi [ 64 ]). Daughters’ social connections may also resemble maternal ones more than sons' (macaques [ 53 ]).…”