Mating Strategies Of Subordinate Males In Tibetan Macaques (Macaca Thibetana) At Huangshan, China

Group-living animals, such as most nohunman-primate species, reap fitness benefits from increased foraging efficiency and decreased predation risks that group-living provides. However, social living also imposes costs on group members, including competition for space, food, sexual partners, and other resources. However, in nonhuman primates with linear dominant hierarchy, dominant males have priority of access to females in the social group. On the other hand, subordinate individuals have less mating opportunity. One of the fundamental question is how to obtain mating opportunity and to increase the reproductive success for subordinate individuals. This issue, which has been more or less ignored in the previous studies, can shed light on the knowledge of mating system and mating strategy.In the study, we uesd focal animal sampling, all-occurrence sampling, and continuously recording methods, we collected the behavioral data from the YA1group of wild Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) at Huangshan, China, in mating season (from September to December2012), to discuss the mating strategy of subordinate Tibetan monkeys. The main results were:(1) We found that the frequency of copulations between subordinate males and females were higher when higher-ranking males absent than present.(2) Most mating events of subordinate males were higher frequency with clandestine and forced mating than higher-ranking males.(3) Furthermore, higher-ranking males preferred to choose higher quality adult females, subordinate individuals have no preferred mating partners.(4) For the mating efforts, dominant males followed the females with the higher frequencies. However, subordinate Tibetan monkeys obtained mating opportunity by grimacing and sexual chasing.Thus, we concluded that subordinate males formed the changeable and opportunity mating strategy, most of the copulatory behaviors were forced mating in Tibetan monkeys.