Researchers use monkey poop to gain insight into mating strategies of critically endangered muriquis

Northern muriquis are one of the most endangered species of monkeys in the world and are on the verge of extinction, which is why, rearing healthy offsprings is critical for their long-term existence.

Researchers are now turning to the poop of these primates in order to gain a better understanding of how they choose their mates and to gain insights into their mating lives.

In a paper published on August 2 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the scientists combined genetic analysis with long-term behavioural observations so as to understand the reproductive patterns of the endangered species.

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Unlike most primates, Muriquis, live in peaceful, egalitarian societies centred on related males and their mothers.

Karen Strier, a co-author of the paper and a professor of anthropology at UW-Madison, who has been studying the behaviour and ecology of these monkeys in a small, preserved section of the Brazilian forest for the past 40 years, said that she and her team can now identify each of the monkeys and also whose poop is whose.

She and her colleagues collected the samples and handed them over to Anthony Di Fiore, an anthropology professor and director of the Primate Molecular Ecology and Evolution Lab at UT Austin, and Paulo Chaves, Di Fiore's graduate student at the time. They further used these samples to study the DNA in order to understand the mating behaviour of muriquis.

The research team was able to ask unique genetic questions because Strier's field crew knew which samples belonged to whom.

“I knew from behavioural observations that there was a lack of competition in mating and that mothers didn't mate with their sons or close male relatives. But the only way to know who the fathers are is with genetics,” Strier said.

Females tend to mate and reproduce with males who have diverse set of genes coding

Chaves and Di Fiore, following their lab analysis confirmed that there were no mother-son pairings, which further suggested that the muriquis may recognize their family members, which helps them to avoid incestuous mating.

Their analysis also discovered that the female muriquis prefer to mate with males who have a more diverse set of genes coding for molecules that play an important role in the body’s immune response to pathogens and other environmental stressors.

This interesting class of genes is known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), and Chaves and Di Fiore were able to characterize genetic variation between individual monkeys.

“Our finding that male sires have higher MHC diversity than expected by chance is one of the things we would expect if that diversity contributes to male fitness or is one of the dimensions of female mate choice," Di Fiore said.

"Our study is one of just a handful that has looked at the relationship between MHC variation and reproductive patterns in wild primates and is the only one to do so for an egalitarian species like muriquis,” she added.

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