Abstract:
Mating systems in animal societies contain both social and genetic components. Deviations
between these components may have important ramifications for our understanding of the
evolution of animal reproductive strategies and their ecological correlates. However,
although there is ample evidence for discrepancies between genetically assigned paternities
and social associations in birds, relatively few studies have documented such differences in
mammals. Moreover, few studies have addressed how deviations between social mating
associations and actual mating activities influence patterns of resource utilisation in males
and females. The aardwolf is a socially monogamous hyaenid that exhibits polygamous
mating behaviour. Suitable den sites for resting and rearing offspring is an important resource
for terrestrial mammals, and dens are vital to aardwolves as thermal refugia for protection of
offspring. We show that temporal patterns in aardwolf den use relates to predictions from
polygamous mating rather than social monogamy. Male aardwolves used more dens, changed
dens more frequently and stayed in dens for shorter periods of time than females during both
wet and dry seasons. We suggest that lower male den fidelity is either caused by males trying
to maximize female encounters and to monitor female activity, or that it had evolved as a
non-adaptive behaviour related to elevated androgen levels. Our data did not point to
territorial defence or space use optimization as cause for the observed sex differences, since
we did not find any sex or seasonal differences in the spatial patterns of utilized dens. We
suggest that aardwolves may have been ecologically constrained to exhibit social monogamy
but that polymagous mating is maintained through extra pair copulations. We recommend
that the evolutionary stability of these two conflicting strategies of male fitness maximization
must be further investigated.
