Abstract
In traditional definitions of endurance rivalry, individuals compete to remain reproductively active longer than their rivals, but these time periods are typically brief, such as a single breeding season. Here, we explored endurance rivalry among adult males in a long-lived species that breeds year-round, the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta). We found that most dispersing males navigated the adaptive challenges of remaining in their new clans (“enduring”) for over 2 years before siring their first cub. Additionally, sires remained in their new clans at least 4 years, whereas males that never sired any cubs typically disappeared by their fourth year of tenure. This suggests that males might incorporate their initial reproductive success in the clan into their decisions regarding whether to “endure” by remaining in the current clan or to disperse again to another clan. Finally, we used Bayesian mixed modeling to explore variation in annual male reproductive success, which we found to have a positive linear relationship with tenure and a quadratic relationship with age. A male’s rate of social associations with adult females, but not aggressive interactions with those females, was predictive of his annual reproductive success. We also found substantial individual variation in annual reproductive success across males. Our results support the notion that male spotted hyenas compete via an extended endurance rivalry; tenure unequivocally improves male reproductive success, but advanced age does not, and questions remain regarding other traits that might be salient to the rivalry or to female mate choice in this species.
Significance statement
Some animals compete indirectly for mates by trying to outlast their competitors during a finite breeding season; individuals that can endure the longest in this “marathon” reap the reproductive rewards. Male spotted hyenas face a different challenge because females breed year-round, so the competition to remain viable as mates is seemingly endless. Here, we show that male spotted hyenas seem to make decisions about whether to stay in a clan based on their initial reproductive success in that clan. For males with early success, the longer they stay and the more time they spend with females, the more cubs they sire each year. Our findings suggest that male spotted hyenas compete for mating opportunities via an “ultramarathon” in which they must remain in a single social group at the bottom of the hierarchy for many years to demonstrate to females their ability to endure.
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Data availability
The datasets analyzed during the current study are available on Dryad at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0vt4b8h2h.
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Acknowledgements
We are greatly appreciative of the Kenyan Ministry for Education, Science, and Technology, the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Research and Training Institute, the Narok County Council, the Naboisho Conservancy, and the Senior Warden of the Masai Mara Reserve for permitting us to conduct research on wild spotted hyenas. We are also thankful to the research assistants who collected data for this project. Special thanks to H.E. Watts, A. Booms, K. Califf, and R.C. Van Horn for assisting with paternity analysis. We would like to thank our two anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Finally, we thank D.W. Linden, J. Conner, F. Dyer, and T. Getty for their helpful feedback on this manuscript.
Funding
This research was supported by National Science Foundation grants IOS 0819437, IOS 0809914, IOB 0920505 and IOS 1121474, OISE1853934, and IOS 1755089 to KEH and awards from the American Society for Mammalogists, Amherst College, the Animal Behavior Society, the Kosciuszko Foundation, and Michigan State University to LJC.
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Curren, L.J., Sawdy, M.A., Scribner, K.T. et al. Endurance rivalry among male spotted hyenas: what does it mean to “endure”?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 76, 112 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-022-03212-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-022-03212-7