Summary
Black-tailed prairie dogs are colonial rodents that live in contiguous social groups called coteries. A typical coterie contains one adult (≧2 years old) male, three or four adult females, and several yearlings and juveniles of both sexes. A large coterie sometimes contains two or more adult males. Using detailed behavioral observations on 164 females (of which 160 copulated) and data from four polymorphic loci from parents and offspring of 121 litters, we examined the black-tail mating system.
Most females (101/164=62%) copulated with a single adult male, and only 3 of the 102 litters with ≧2 offspring (3%) showed unequivocal evidence of multiple paternity. Adult males usually copulated with several different adult females.
In one-male coteries, females usually copulated exclusively with the resident adult male (RAM) (82/112=73%); this trend was confirmed by electrophoresis of blood smaples. In multimale coteries, each female frequently copulated with at least two different RAMs (28/52=54%); in 4 of 5 multimale coteries (80%) which produced two or more litters whose paternities could be unequivocally resolved by electrophoresis, two different RAMs each sired at least one litter.
Of the 164 females, 30 (18%) copulated with both the RAM (or one of the RAMs, in multimale coteries) and an extracoterie adult male, but only 3 (2%) copulated exclusively with an extracoterie adult male. Electrophoresis showed that 9 of 121 litters (7%) were sired by an extracoterie adult male.
Intersexual comparisons of annual reproductive success and lifetime reproductive success both indicate that black-tails are polygynous (i.e., that variance in reproductive success is greater for males than for females).
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Hoogland, J.L., Foltz, D.W. Variance in male and female reproductive success in a harem-polygynous mammal, the black-tailed prairie dog (Sciuridae: Cynomys ludovicianus). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 11, 155–163 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00300058
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00300058