Anne Pusey: "Competition and cooperation in a male philopatric species"
Mon, April 28, 2014 • 12:00 PM • SAC 5.118
Chimpanzees are unusual among social mammals in their pattern of strict philopatry by males and dispersal by most females to new communities before breeding. Recent work on the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park, Tanzania, has examined: 1) how males cooperate to defend the community range while competing with group-mates over sexual access to community females; 2) how females compete for long-term access to productive core areas, and occasionally cooperate in this competition; 3) the dilemmas that females face in this unusual social system. Emigration imposes significant costs but so does close inbreeding. Genetic analysis of the relatedness between parents of surviving offspring reveals the extent to which inbreeding is avoided.
Anne Pusey is the James B. Duke Professor and Chair of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University