Jan.
23, 2013 — Breaking up is hard to do -- and can be detrimental to one's
reproductive fitness, according to a new University of Pennsylvania study.
Focusing
on wide-eyed, nocturnal owl monkeys, considered a socially monogamous species,
the research reveals that, when an owl monkey pair is severed by an intruding
individual, the mate who takes up with a new partner produces fewer offspring
than a monkey who sticks with its tried-and-true partner.
The
findings underscore how monogamy and pair-bonds -- relatively rare social
formations among mammals -- can benefit certain individuals, with potential
implications for understanding how human relationship patterns may have
evolved.
Eduardo
Fernandez-Duque and Maren Huck report on the research inPLOS
ONE. Fernandez-Duque is an associate professor in Penn's Department of
Anthropology. Huck completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Fernandez-Duque's
laboratory and is now a professor at the University of Derby in the United
Kingdom.
Since
1997, Fernandez-Duque and colleagues have monitored an owl monkey population in
a portion of Argentina's Chaco region. Their behavioral observations,
demographic data and physiological sampling have provided a wealth of
information on the animals.
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