Sociality of the dispersing sex: the nature of social bonds in West African female chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes

Abstract

Patterns of group social structure are often linked to the competitive regime within a social unit and to the availability of kin. In line with this, many studies have shown that the dispersing sex, which is considered to have fewer kin around, is less social, while the philopatric sex has strong social bonds. Chimpanzees were considered to fit well into this scheme with highly social and competing philopatric males and generally asocial and solitary dispersing females. However, recent data suggest that chimpanzee females can indeed be highly social, even though they are unlikely to be related to each other. We