The role of kinship and demography in shaping cooperation amongst male lions.

ABSTRACT: The influence of kinship on animal cooperation is often unclear. Cooperating Asiatic lion coalitions are linearly hierarchical; male partners appropriate resources disproportionately. To investigate how kinship affect coalitionary dynamics, we combined microsatellite based genetic inferences with long-term genealogical records to measure relatedness between coalition partners of free-ranging lions in Gir, India. Large coalitions had higher likelihood of having sibling partners, while pairs were primarily unrelated. Fitness computations incorporating genetic relatedness revealed that low-ranking males in large coalitions were typically related to the dominant males and had fitness indices higher than single males, contrary to the previous understanding of this system based on indices derive

SUBMITTER: Chakrabarti S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7568578 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature