Highly differentiated and affiliative social relationships are observed in a variety of mammals, including primates, cetaceans, and social carnivores. Although there has been a transformation in our understanding of the form and function of social bonds in the past two decades, the role of early life social experiences in the development of bonds remains less clear. Few studies have examined whether social relationships during infancy and juvenility (aside from those between mothers and offspring) persist into adulthood. In this study, we used longitudinal data on wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Gombe National Park, Tanzania, to investigate the effects of party-level association during infancy and juvenility (hereafter immaturity) on affiliative relationships among adult males (the philopatric sex). In total, we examined behavioral data from focal follows between 1970 and 2015 (N = 23 adult males). We used maternal associations as proxies for the associations of immature males, and we measured adult male social relationships using party-level associations and grooming activity. We found that immature males that associated with individual adult males at higher rates had stronger relationships with those same adult males later in life. By contrast, rates of association between pairs of immature males did not predict the strength of their dyadic relationships as adults. Overall, these findings emphasize the importance of early socialization in male chimpanzee social development. These results also reinforce studies in mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei) and bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.), suggesting that the persistence of social relationships that do not involve the mother may be more likely to evolve in long-lived species where young adult males face challenges entering an adult hierarchy composed of stronger and/or more socially experienced competitors.

在各种哺乳动物中观察到高度分化和亲和的社会关系，包括灵长类动物、鲸类动物和社会食肉动物。尽管过去二十年我们对社会纽带的形式和功能的理解发生了转变，但早期社会经历在纽带发展中的作用仍然不太清楚。很少有研究调查婴儿期和青少年时期的社会关系（除了母亲和后代之间的关系）是否会持续到成年期。在这项研究中，我们使用了野生黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) 在坦桑尼亚贡贝国家公园，调查婴儿期和青少年期（以下简称未成熟期）党级协会对成年男性（亲情性）之间的从属关系的影响。总的来说，我们检查了 1970 年至 2015 年间焦点跟踪的行为数据（N= 23 名成年男性）。我们使用母性协会作为未成熟男性协会的代理，我们使用政党级别的协会和美容活动来衡量成年男性的社会关系。我们发现，与个体成年男性相关联的未成熟男性在以后的生活中与这些成年男性有更强的关系。相比之下，成对未成熟雄性之间的关联率并不能预测他们成年后的二元关系的强度。总的来说，这些发现强调了早期社会化在雄性黑猩猩社会发展中的重要性。这些结果也加强了对山地大猩猩 ( Gorilla beringei ) 和宽吻海豚 ( Tursiops ) 的研究。 sp.)，表明不涉及母亲的社会关系的持久性可能更有可能在长寿物种中进化，在这些物种中，年轻的成年男性面临进入由更强大和/或更有社会经验的竞争者组成的成年等级的挑战。