To be or not to be (a daddy): relationship between concealed ovulation and paternity certainty in black and gold howler monkeys in Northern Argentina

RAÑO, MARIANA; OKLANDER, LUCIANA I; VALEGGIA, CLAUDIA R.; GENNUSO, M SOL; NATALINI, M BELEN; ROMERO, VERONICA L; KOWALEWSKI, MARTÍN M

Austin

Congreso; 87TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS; 2018

American Association of Physical Anthropologists

It has been postulated that female non-human primates implement different strategies for confusing paternity including mating with several males, copulations outside the fertile period, dispersion, and coalitions across their ovulatory cycle. We explored whether males with whom the female copulated during the POP (periovulatory period) were the father of their offspring as well.We combined behavioral, hormonal and genetic studies of wild black and gold female howlers (Alouatta caraya), inhabiting the San Cayetano State Park (27° 30? S-58° 41? W) in northern Argentina. We collected 3850 hours of matingbehavior and 877 urinary samples from 5 females in two different groups from August 2011-August 2012. We also run genetic studies to estimate paternity of infants born during the study period trough microsatellite analysis of fecal samples (N = 16). Paternity analyses revealed that central males were the most likely progenitors of infants born during the study period in half of the cases.When matching these results with the ovarian hormone profiles, there are coincidences in all but one of them, where their profile reveals that copulations occurred during the POP were with the central male, but the paternity corresponds to the non-central male. This indicates that, ingeneral, A. caraya females effectively implement a mixed strategy, switching mating strategies across the ovulatory cycle.