Paternal kinship: patterns, mechanisms and cues

先前的研究表明，哺乳动物，包括灵长类动物，可以识别他们的父系亲属，因为个体的社会行为倾向于他们的父系亲属，而不是无关的个体。为了有机会不仅与不相关的个体互动，而且与父系亲属互动，动物社会必须生活在稳定的多雄性多雌性群体中，即使只是暂时的，雌性与多个雄性交配，雄性繁殖高度倾向于少数几个后代。本项目的第一个目的是调查不同物种群体内和群体间父系亲属关系的模式，以预测父系亲属偏见选择的可能性。第二个目标是完善我们对父系亲缘歧视机制的了解，因为最可能的机制（熟悉度和表型匹配）很难解开。这个项目的最终目的是研究潜在的线索，如气味、MHC、外观、声学和/或个性上的相似性，这些线索可能被动物用来识别父系亲属。这项研究的结果将为我们理解亲属关系对人类和其他灵长类动物社会行为进化的影响提供重要的贡献。

Previous studies have shown that mammals, including primates, can recognize their paternal kin as individuals bias their social behavior to their paternal kin in comparison to unrelated individuals. In order to have the opportunity to interact not only with unrelated individuals, but also with paternal kin, an animal society would have to live, even if only temporarily, in stable multi-male multi-female groups where females mate with multiple males and male reproduction is highly skewed towards a few sires. The first aim of the present project is to investigate patterns of paternal kinship within and across groups in different species in order to predict the potential for selection for paternal kin bias. The second aim is to complete our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying paternal kin discrimination as the most likely mechanisms (familiarity and phenotype matching) are difficult to disentangle. The final aim of this project is to study potential cues such as similarity in odor, MHC, appearance, acoustics and/or personality which might be used by animals to identify paternal kin. The results of this study would provide an important contribution to our understanding of the impact of kinship on the evolution of social behavior in humans and other primates.