Father-daughter bonding may help female baboons live longer

Besides humans, very few mammals receive care from their fathers. But when species do, it can benefit their children. New research from the University of Notre Dame has revealed that the strength of early father-daughter relations predicts significant differences in the survival of female baboons.

Published in Acts of the Royal Society BThe study has evaluated the impact that father’s baboons may have when they choose to co -resse or interact with their daughters, even if Babound mothers provide all essential care. Until now, the consequences of the early paternal relationships of offspring were mostly unknown.

“Male baboons tend to reach their reproductive success when they are young adults,” said Elizabeth Archie, professor of biological sciences at Notre Dame and corresponding author of the study.

“But once they have had a few children and their condition decreases, they somehow slide in” dad mode “, where they do not disperse as much and they do not try so hard to mate. Then they have time to invest and spend time with their children.”

Looking at 216 baboons and their fathers in the Eastern African African Ecosystem, the researchers found around a third of girls lived in the same social group as their fathers for three years or more. The remaining two thirds had fathers who had left the group or who died in the first three years of their daughter’s life.

The researchers also evaluated the grooming habits of juvenile women with their fathers and other adult males, which testifies to the potential force of the father father and other relationships. Archie shared that grooming, which is used for hygiene and social ties, could be considered as “the human equivalent of sitting, with a cup of coffee and a good conversation”.

The study has shown that girls who had a close relationship with their fathers, who co-respected with their fathers for three years or more, or both, lived two to four years more than women who had weak father-daughter.

“The adversity of the beginning of life has a powerful effect on the lifespan, so this study suggests that having a father allows women who have known other forms of adversity to recover some of these costs,” said Archie.

“In many mammals, dads have a reputation for not contributing much to offer care, but we now know that even these apparently minor contributions that men make still have very important consequences, at least in baboons.”

In addition, the father-daughter pairs that lived together longer had stronger grooming relationships. Meanwhile, strong relationships between juvenile women and other adult men have not predicted the survival of adults. This could be due to the fact that male baboons sometimes intervene in the name of offspring in conflicts, protecting their daughters, and even mothers, other members of the group.

“Men seem to extend the social network of a child in a way, because they can be popular members of their social group. Many baboons arrive and interact with the male. So an infant who hangs out near a man has more diverse social interactions than if they are dragging with mom,” said Archie. “And dads can create a kind of security zone for their daughters.”

Although the fathers of mammals may not provide much, if not at all, of their offspring, Archie thinks that this study could have an overview of the evolutionary roots of human parental care.

This study is part of the Amboseli Baboon research project, which began in 1971 and is among the oldest primates in the world. The project is co -edited by Archie in Notre Dame, Susan Alberts of Duke University and Jenny Tung at the Max Planck Institute for evolutionary anthropology.

In addition to Archie, Alberts and Tung, the study co-authors include David Jansen at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and J. Kinyua Warutere at Amboseli National Park in Kenya.