TY - JOUR
AU1 - Diaz-Aguirre, Fernando
AU2 - Parra, Guido
AU3 - Passadore, Cecilia
AU4 - Möller, Luciana
AB - Male mammals employ a wide variety of mating strategies in order to increase their reproductive success, which in turn influence their social behavior. In some populations of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops spp.), males cooperate in small groups or alliances to gain access to females for mating. However, the occurrence of these male cooperative groups has been predicted to occur only under certain social and ecological conditions, driven by factors such as differences in population density, operational sex ratio, and sexual size dimorphism. Here, we used generalized affiliation indices, social network techniques, and maternally and bi- parentally inherited genetic markers to investigate the affiliation patterns and genetic relatedness among male southern Australian bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops cf. australis) in a small embayment in South Australia. Photo-identification data and biopsy samples were collected in Coffin Bay from 2013 to 2015 through systematic boat-based surveys. We found that highly sighted male dolphins formed 12 social clusters composed of two to five individuals. Genetic analyses revealed that general male affiliation patterns were significantly correlated with mtDNA haplotype sharing. In addition, preferred affiliates showed signif- icantly higher levels of genetic relatedness compared to casual and avoided male pairs. Our results corroborate theoretical expectations for the formation 
TI - Kinship influences social bonds among male southern Australian bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops cf. australis)
JF - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
DO - 10.1007/s00265-018-2621-4
DA - 2018-12-05
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/kinship-influences-social-bonds-among-male-southern-australian-1CeLOIFCdK
SP - 1
EP - 13
VL - 72
IS - 12
DP - DeepDyve
ER -