title: Early social exposure in wild chimpanzees: mothers with sons are more gregarious than mothers with daughters.
abstract: In many mammals, early social experience is critical to developing species-appropriate adult behaviors. Although mother-infant interactions play an undeniably significant role in social development, other individuals in the social milieu may also influence infant outcomes. Additionally, the social skills necessary for adult success may differ between the sexes. In chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), adult males are more gregarious than females and rely on a suite of competitive and cooperative relationships to obtain access to females. In fission-fusion species, including humans and chimpanzees, subgroup composition is labile and individuals can vary the number of individuals with whom they associate. Thus, mothers in these species have a variety of social options. In this study, we investigated whether wild chimpanzee maternal subgrouping patterns differed based on infant sex. Our results show that mothers of sons were more gregarious than mothers of daughters; differences were especially pronounced during the first 6 mo of life, when infant behavior is unlikely to influence maternal subgrouping. Furthermore, mothers with sons spent significantly more time in parties containing males during the first 6 mo. These early differences foreshadow the well-documented sex differences in adult social behavior, and maternal gregariousness may provide sons with important observational learning experiences and social exposure early in life. The presence of these patterns in chimpanzees raises questions concerning the evolutionary history of differential social exposure and its role in shaping sex-typical behavior in humans.
authors.affiliation: Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052; cmmurray@gwu.edu.
authors.forename: Carson M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Murray
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Biological Foundations of Behavior Program, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17603;
authors.forename: Elizabeth V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Lonsdorf
authors.affiliation: Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052;
authors.forename: Margaret A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Stanton
authors.affiliation: Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052;
authors.forename: Kaitlin R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Wellens
authors.affiliation: Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052;
authors.forename: Jordan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.affiliation: The Jane Goodall Institute, Vienna, VA 22182; and.
authors.forename: Jane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Goodall
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708.
authors.forename: Anne E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Pusey
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000835:Animals, Wild / Q000502:physiology*; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: chimpanzees; fission–fusion species; infant socialization; maternal behavior