Elsevier

Animal Behaviour

Volume 75, Issue 3, March 2008, Pages 991-1001
Animal Behaviour

Mating patterns and sexual swellings in pair-living and multimale groups of wild white-handed gibbons, Hylobates lar

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.08.012Get rights and content

White-handed gibbons usually live in monogamous pairs, but at Khao Yai National Park, Thailand groups often contain two adult males. We studied mating and sexual behaviour (i.e. proceptivity, receptivity and attractivity) of 12 females in relation to the females' fertile phases as assessed by faecal progestogen analysis. Females' mating activity, in pairs and multimale groups, exceeded the fertile phase and extended well into gestation and, in one exceptional case, into lactation. Whereas copulation frequency was skewed towards one male and peaked during the periovulatory period, no significant difference between fertile and nonfertile phases of the menstrual cycle was detected. Similarly, frequencies of female sexual behaviours, such as proceptivity and receptivity, did not differ across menstrual cycle phases and were common during pregnancy but absent during lactation. However, female attractivity in the form of sexual swellings directly affected copulation frequency, in that copulations were concentrated in the period when females were maximally swollen. Our data suggest that female sexual behaviours do not provide reliable information on the precise timing of the fertile phase to males. Because copulation frequencies were closely associated to sexual swelling stage during both ovarian cycles and pregnancy, we advocate that gibbon females display such visual signals to manipulate male mating behaviour. The results suggest that sexual swellings enable females to mate with multiple males during times when they are not fertile, perhaps to benefit from paternity confusion or to bias copulations towards preferred males when highly fertile to acquire ‘good genes’.

Section snippets

Study Site and Animals

The study was carried out in Khao Yai National Park, central Thailand (101°22′E, 14°26′N). The study area consists of a seasonally wet evergreen rain forest with small patches of secondary growth and is at an elevation of 730–870 m. Data were collected from 12 groups, each with a single multiparous female. Seven of the groups were pair-living while five groups contained two adult males that were unrelated to the female. Those five groups are considered to exhibit multimale group structures

Mating Activity in Relation to Reproductive Conditions and Social System

Mating activity was not confined to specific months or seasons. We observed matings in each month of the year for cycling females and in 11 of 12 months for pregnant females. In total, 442 copulations were recorded (cycling females: 62%, Ncop = 275; pregnant females: 36%, Ncop = 158; one lactating female: Ncop = 9; the lactating female copulated only directly after a male replacement). The frequency of copulations over the total time of observation was similar in cycling (median = 0.12, range = 

Discussion

By combining behavioural and endocrinological data we provide direct evidence of flexible mating behaviour in a wild white-handed gibbon population. Specifically we show that, contrary to earlier descriptions of white-handed gibbon mating behaviour (Carpenter, 1940, Ellefson, 1974), the majority of females in our sample are polyandrous and not monoandrous. Although females copulated with multiple males (either the social partner and extragroup males or both males in multiple groups), copulation

Acknowledgments

We thank T. Deschner, R. Mundry, C. Nunn, B. Preston and three anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the manuscript, M. Arandjelovic for improving the manuscript, K. Hodges for access to the laboratory, J. Hagedorn and A. Heistermann for assistance in the laboratory and C. Sagnate, C. Mungpoonklang, S. Sornchaipoom, S. Homros, T. Chaiyakarn and C. Neumann for helping in collecting faecal samples and/or observational data. We are also grateful to the National Research Council of

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    1

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    U. H. Reichard is at Southern Illinois University, 4430 Faner Hall, Carbondale, IL 62901-4502, U.S.A.

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