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Science 19 January 2001:
Vol. 291. no. 5503, pp. 442 - 443
DOI: 10.1126/science.1058250
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Perspectives

BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY:
Dividing Up the Kids

Walter D. Koenig and Joseph Haydock

Among cooperatively breeding mammals such as the meerkat (a type of mongoose), dominant breeding females have been thought to subdue the reproductive activities of subordinate females to optimize their own fitness. Optimal skew or concessions theory predicts that if disgruntled subordinates decide to leave the group, the dominant female will offer them reproductive rights as a concession to induce them to stay. However, as Koenig and Haydock explain in their Perspective, a new field study by Clutton-Brock and colleagues on meerkats in the Kalahari refutes this theory and instead suggests that dominant females have little control over the reproductive rights of subordinates.

W. D. Koenig is at the Hastings Reservation and Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Carmel Valley, CA 93924, USA. J. Haydock is in the Biology Department, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99258, USA. E-mail: wicker@uclink4.berkeley.edu, haydock@gonzaga.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Reproductive skew among males in a female-dominated mammalian society.
A. L. Engh, S. M. Funk, R. C. V. Horn, K. T. Scribner, M. W. Bruford, S. Libants, M. Szykman, L. Smale, and K. E. Holekamp (2002)
Behav. Ecol. 13, 193-200
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