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Preliminary Evidence of Maternal Care Styles in Mantled Howler Monkeys (Alouatta palliata)
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Preliminary Evidence of Maternal Care Styles in Mantled Howler Monkeys (Alouatta palliata)
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Preliminary Evidence of Maternal Care Styles in Mantled Howler Monkeys (Alouatta palliata)
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Journal Article
Preliminary Evidence of Maternal Care Styles in Mantled Howler Monkeys (Alouatta palliata)
2025
Overview
Parental care strategies are adaptations shaped by evolutionary pressures to maximize offspring survival while balancing current and future reproductive investment. Maternal care styles, which are consistent patterns of behavior that vary among individuals, have been well-documented in catarrhines but remain poorly understood in platyrrhines. Furthermore, while previous studies have documented that maternal behaviors change as infants develop, whether individual maternal styles remain consistent or shift across infant developmental stages remains largely unexplored. This represents a critical gap, because understanding the interaction between maternal styles and infant age could reveal whether mothers maintain fixed behavioral phenotypes or demonstrate flexible responses to changing developmental needs. We investigated whether wild mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) show distinct maternal care styles that change across infant development. Using an age-specific analytical approach, we examined whether maternal behavior is organized into distinct styles during each of early, middle, and late infant development. We observed 16 mother-infant dyads in four groups at three sites in Los Tuxtlas, Mexico, collecting 743 hours of focal observations over 2 years. Using robust principal component analysis and bootstrap-validated cluster analysis, we identified three distinct maternal styles during early infancy (Minimal-investment, High investment, and Proximity-focused), three styles during middle infancy (Minimal-investment, High-support, and Mixed-investment), and two styles during late infancy (Minimal-investment and Selective-support). We found minimal consistency in individual maternal styles across infant development stages, with infant age significantly explaining behavioral variance whereas maternal identity did not. Our results offer preliminary evidence that mantled howler monkey mothers strategically adjust care patterns in response to infant developmental needs rather than maintaining consistent individual styles. If such dynamic adjustment allows for the successful balancing of the competing demands of ensuring current offspring survival and maintaining capacity for future reproduction, our results contribute to the understanding of the evolution of maternal investment strategies in primates.
