Social Monogamy: Reproductive Behavior

Social monogamy is the name given to a reproductive behavior, which consists of a loyal social partnership between the same male and female for an extended amount of time ((Díaz-Muñoz et al, 2015)). However, this term has caused some controversy in the scientific community over the years. Animals that were once categorized as being monogamous have been observed behaving in non-monogamous ways. This is especially true for primates that have been studied, but the reasoning is interesting. Social monogamy is considered to be very rare among mammals, but the behavior has been seen slightly more often in primates (Tecot et al, 2016). This is interesting because primates are classified as mammals. If this social behavior happens to be so rare in
This is because monogamy is closely partnered with parenting, which is costly for males in mammal species. Mammal offspring tend to rely heavily on their mothers, so that leaves the males with very little responsibilities after successfully mating. This means that his fitness actually increases if he leaves his offspring and mate to go find another mate because of how much this action reduces his overall energy cost (Tecot et al, 2016). Also, the absence of the father has no effect of the offspring, so it is puzzling as to why this behavior is selected for in any primates at all. This puzzling concept led to a revised definition to the term, social monogamy, because some primates did more than just choose mating over parenting. The new definition described social monogamy as any kind of social bond or pairing between a male and a female where the male actively stayed in contact with his mate (Díaz-Muñoz et al, 2015). This is clearly a vague description of a reproductive behavior because it has nothing to do with the male staying exclusive to the female. However, this description had to be changed because of the several different ways that social monogamy has been adapted in different species of primates (Fernandez-Duque,
The researcher set out to try and disprove an old hypothesis and he succeeded in doing so. He argued that these owl monkeys do not participate in social monogamy for reasons regarding parenting factors. In this case, social monogamy was selected for based on the environment that the owl monkeys were living in. The resources that the environment provided ultimately determined how the females, or potential mates, were dispersed throughout the forest. This meant that a greater food density would lead to a higher population of females. However, due to how spaced out the food supply was in this forest for this species, the males had to make sure that they picked a prosperous region. Their intention is to lock down a region and the potential mates that live in that region. This would be a form of social monogamy because they perform a defensive action, known as mate-guarding. Although they may have up to three possible mates in their region, this is still considered a form of monogamy in the broad sense of the term (Fernandez-Duque, 2016). For this particular research, it can be concluded that the ultimate cause for social monogamy in this species in definitely food availability. However, this research still leaves the audience asking how such a behavior come