Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword by Robert L. Trivers
- Preface
- PART I INTRODUCTION
- PART II SEXUAL SIGNALS: SUBSTRATES AND FUNCTION
- PART III SEXUAL SELECTION IN ACTION
- PART IV DEVELOPMENT AND CONSEQUENCES
- 10 Development and sexual selection in primates
- 11 Alternative male reproductive strategies: male bimaturism in orangutans
- 12 Sexual selection and the careers of primate males: paternity concentration, dominance-acquisition tactics and transfer decisions
- 13 Sexual selection, measures of sexual selection, and sexual dimorphism in primates
- 14 Sex ratios in primate groups
- 15 Natural and sexual selection and the evolution of multi-level societies: insights from zebras with comparisons to primates
- Index
- References
11 - Alternative male reproductive strategies: male bimaturism in orangutans
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword by Robert L. Trivers
- Preface
- PART I INTRODUCTION
- PART II SEXUAL SIGNALS: SUBSTRATES AND FUNCTION
- PART III SEXUAL SELECTION IN ACTION
- PART IV DEVELOPMENT AND CONSEQUENCES
- 10 Development and sexual selection in primates
- 11 Alternative male reproductive strategies: male bimaturism in orangutans
- 12 Sexual selection and the careers of primate males: paternity concentration, dominance-acquisition tactics and transfer decisions
- 13 Sexual selection, measures of sexual selection, and sexual dimorphism in primates
- 14 Sex ratios in primate groups
- 15 Natural and sexual selection and the evolution of multi-level societies: insights from zebras with comparisons to primates
- Index
- References
Summary
INTRODUCTION
An individual's lifetime reproductive success is determined by the degree to which it copes with the various challenges that it faces in the different stages of its life. These challenges change constantly from early juvenility until late adulthood (Setchell & Lee, this volume). They require corresponding adaptive variation in the tactics of survival and reproduction, as the animal passes through the successive phases of its life cycle. This dynamic change takes its most dramatic form in those species where an individual goes through one or several distinct larval stages before becoming a reproductively active adult. Apart from such successive changes, there are also variations in fitness-maximising tactics that coexist side by side. In this chapter we deal specifically with such parallel or alternative fitness trajectories in a primate, the orangutan, a species with two adult, sexually mature male morphs. A recent study by Utami et al. (2002) has shown that these two male morphs exist side by side in a natural population and that each morph can and does produce offspring, suggesting that they represent parallel alternative reproductive tactics. Here we review the pertinent evidence.
It has long been an established fact in ethology that interactions with social partners influence an individual's motivational state and vice versa, and, through interactions, its physiological development and condition. For example, the suppression of reproductive processes by the presence of a same-sex conspecific has been documented for many species, including primates.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sexual Selection in PrimatesNew and Comparative Perspectives, pp. 196 - 207Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
References
- 28
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