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Polygyny (/ p ə ˈ l ɪ dʒ ɪ n i /; from Neo-Greek πολυγυνία, from πολύ-(polú-) ' many ' and γυνή (gunḗ) ' woman, wife ') [1] is a mating system in which one male lives and mates with multiple females but each female only mates with a single male.
Polygyny threshold model graph. The polygyny threshold model is an evolutionary explanation of polygyny, the mating of one male of a species with more than one female. The model shows how females may gain a higher level of biological fitness by mating with a male who already has a mate. The female makes this choice despite other surrounding ...
Polygyny, or a polygynous mating system, is when one adult male mates with two or more adult females. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It is the most common type of mating system in observed in primate studies. [ 1 ] Polygyny can occur as a result of spatial constraints where solitary males are able to defend access to nearby solitary females.
Polygyny is associated with an increased sharing of subsistence provided by women. This is consistent with the theory that if women raise the children alone, men can concentrate on the mating effort. Polygyny is also associated with greater environmental variability in the form of variability of rainfall. This may increase the differences in ...
The results indicated that alpha male Capuchin are the preferred mate for adult females. However, only the alpha females had strong interactions with the alpha males by virtue of a dominance hierarchy among the females in which only the most dominant and strong females were able to interact with the alpha male. [4]
Females that closely associate with the dominant male are called "central females," while females who associate less frequently with the dominant male are called "peripheral females." [ 2 ] Juvenile male offspring leave the harem and live either solitarily, or, with other young males in groups known as bachelor herds . [ 3 ]
Extant primates exhibit a broad range of variation in sexual size dimorphism (SSD), or sexual divergence in body size. [4] It ranges from species such as gibbons and strepsirrhines (including Madagascar's lemurs) in which males and females have almost the same body sizes to species such as chimpanzees and bonobos in which males' body sizes are larger than females' body sizes.
In animal behavior, resource defense polygyny is a mating strategy where a male is able to support multiple female mates by competing with other males for access to a resource. [1] [2] In such a system, males are territorial. Because male movement is restricted, female-female competition for a male also results.