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Sweet mama: Affiliative interactions are related to the reproductive success of dominant female Alpine Marmots (Marmota marmota)

Panaccio, Matteo
; 
von Hardenberg, Achaz
; 
Ferrari, Caterina
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Affiliation
University of Chester; University of Pavia; Gran Paradiso National Park
EPub Date
Publication Date
2024-10-16
Submitted Date
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Biological Sciences
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Abstract
Sociality is a complex phenomenon, able to influence multiple traits of an individual life history. In group-living mammals, sociality is likely to play a major role in the reproductive success of individuals. Here we investigate how sociality traits are associated to reproductive success in female Alpine marmots (Marmota marmota), a highly social and cooperative breeding ground squirrel distributed in the European Alps. We used social network analysis to calculate sociality metrics and hurdle generalized linear mixed models (hurdle GLMMs) to model the relationship between sociality metrics and reproductive success of individually tagged female Alpine marmots. Our results showed that centrality of a reproductive female within her social group and the number of social partners are positively related to reproductive success, while agonistic behavior was not related with reproduction. Our results highlight the importance of affiliative interactions with other group members in cooperative breeders, suggesting that in such systems female fitness could be more related to social cohesion than to costs of agonistic behaviors to maintain dominance status.
Citation
Panaccio, M., von Hardenberg, A., & Ferrari, C. (2025). Sweet mama: Affiliative interactions are related to the reproductive success of dominant female Alpine marmots (Marmota marmota). Journal of Ethology, 43, 21-30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-024-00825-5
Publisher
Springer
Journal
Journal of Ethology
Research Unit
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/629089
DOI
10.1007/s10164-024-00825-5
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Type
Article
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Description
The version of record of this article, first published in [Journal of Ethology], is available online at Publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10164-024-00825-5
Series/Report no.
ISSN
0289-0771
EISSN
1439-5444
ISBN
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Unfunded
Additional Links
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10164-024-00825-5