Daniel Blumstein

We have mothers varying quite a bit in how, quote, good they are.

Some ignore their kids.

Others are very attentive to their kids.

Being attentive to your kids doesn't really help if you're living around a fox.

The fox will kill all your kids.

There is reproductive suppression, whereas mothers are preventing younger daughters from reproducing.

So a lot of the things we're studying in the yellow-bellied marmots are that sociality isn't necessarily good, but they're sort of forced into it.

In terms of mating, sometimes there are multi-male groups.

And in multi-male groups, pretty much everything happens.

We have one male defending all of the females and mating with all of them.

We have one male defending subsets, males defending subsets of females and mating with them.

And then we have mixed paternity.

Mixed paternity is not uncommon in mammals.

So we can have that in yellow bellieds.

The other thing that the most successful males, males typically have a tenure of about two years.

The most successful males, so the whole idea of called reproductive skew.

And reproductive skew is,

you know, who's getting it.

And in females, there's not a lot of skew.

I mean, there is a little bit, but I mean, if you're alive and a breeder, you're getting it.