Despite Two New Studies on Motives for Monogamy, the Debate Continues
By CARL ZIMMER
Published: July 29, 2013

The golden lion tamarin, a one-pound primate that lives in Brazil, is a stunningly monogamous creature. A male will typically pair with a female and they will stay close for the rest of their lives, mating only with each other and then working together to care for their young.

To biologists, this deeply monogamous way of life — found in 9 percent of mammal species — is puzzling. A seemingly better evolutionary strategy for male mammals would be to spend their time looking for other females with which to mate.

“Monogamy is a problem,” said Dieter Lukas of the University of Cambridge in a telephone news conference on Monday. “Why should the male keep to one female?”

The evolution of monogamy has inspired many different ideas. “These hypotheses have been suggested for the past 40 years, and there’s been no resolution of the debate,” said Kit Opie of the University College London in an interview.

On Monday, Dr. Opie and Dr. Lukas each published a large-scale study of monogamy that they hoped would resolve the debate. But they ended up coming to opposing conclusions, which means the debate over monogamy continues.

Dr. Lukas, co-author of a paper in the journal Science with Tim Clutton-Brock of Cambridge, looked at 2,545 species of mammals, tracing their mating evolution from their common ancestor some 170 million years ago.

The scientists found that mammals shifted from solitary living to monogamy 61 times over their evolution. They then searched for any factors that these mammals had in common. They concluded that monogamy evolves when females become hostile with one another and live in ranges that do not overlap. When females live this way, they set up so much distance between one another that a single male cannot prevent other males from mating with them. Staying close to one female became a better strategy. Once males began doing so, they sometimes evolved to provide care to their offspring as well.

For his study, Dr. Opie and his colleagues examined 230 primate species, because monogamy is especially high in that group. They came down in favor of a different hypothesis: the threat of infanticide drove the evolution of monogamy.

“What we found was a very neat pathway for primates to evolve monogamy,” Dr. Opie said.

In many species of mammals, males will sometimes kill the young offspring of other males. Scientists have proposed that they do so because nursing females do not ovulate. By killing a female’s offspring, a male then gains the chance to have offspring of his own with her.

In The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Opie and his colleagues argue that in many primate species, males responded to the threat of infanticide by sticking with females after they gave birth.

Dr. Opie offered possible explanations for why his team and Dr. Lukas’s came to different conclusions. It is possible that the forces driving the evolution of monogamy in primates are different than in other mammals. Dr. Opie also noted that he and his colleagues had used a more powerful type of statistics, known as Bayesian probability, to reconstruct the evolution of monogamy.

“They don’t use the latest methods, which is a bit of a pity,” Dr. Opie said.

But Jacobus Boomsma of the University of Copenhagen, who was not involved in either study, found Dr. Lukas’s paper to be superior. “It makes perfect sense to me,” he said.

Sergey Gavrilets, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Tennessee, also favored Dr. Lukas’s conclusions. But he also noted that neither study tested all of scientists’ proposed explanations, like monogamy’s benefits in lowering the risk of sexually transmitted diseases or the possibility that females chose to mate with males who repeatedly brought them food.

“It is still unknown how these other scenarios fare,” Dr. Gavrilets said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/science/despite-two-new-studies-on-motives-for-monogamy-the-debate-continues.html?_r=0

In any event it appears it was the wimmin's doing. We are surprised??

Interesting studies.

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You're a daisy if you do.
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........Ooops wait.......that was Mahogany........sorry!

And still 'till today staying monogamous is really hard for most humans.

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

Well, we know what Opie thinks...but what is Aunt Bea's perspective?

There's monogamy and then there's monogamy.

Monogamous species will have always have some members who will stray. It's simply a difference in proportion amplified by population density and environmental circumstances.

Here's a excellent book on the subject; it postulates that monogamy in humans started to become widespread with the rising of agriculture. Prior to that there was no advantage of staying with only one partner for either sex. It also feeds into the hostile females/greater range theory: when you have land ownership for agricultural purposes you have a greater range between males.

what I find interesting about the study is it makes no mention of the indefinable concept of love.

As humans we know that love exists between members of our species, its definitely a quantifiable mental and physical connection between individuals and family groups, sometimes resulting in irrational risk to the individual for the preservation of a loved one.
We also know that love exists in less intelligent creatures such as dogs.

I don't find it impossible that these different types of primates could develop connections between individuals that may not be explained scientifically. Male primate A may just really like spending time with female primate B, and want to hang around.

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Men want all women to do one thing, women want one man to do everything.

Amen!

That's funny right there!

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Succinct!

Watch your mouth.

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You're a daisy if you do.
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84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

I have not read all of the Posts does anyone think that the Money and time spent on Monogamy Research could have been better used elsewhere; like inventing a better Acne Cream or something.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Depends on the origin of the money. If it was privately financed then WGAS?

If it is publicly financed then the public has an interest in how their tax dollars are disbursed.