Juvenile male dolphin. Credit: Shark Bay Dolphin Research
Key points:
- Juvenile male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins establish strong social bonds to practice the reproductive behaviors they will use as adults.
- The time spent doing these play behaviors predicts how many offspring males will sire as adults.
- This study is a rare example of the relationship between juvenile play behavior and reproductive success in a wild animal.
A new study shows juvenile social play predicts adult reproductive success in male bottlenose dolphins. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are rare evidence that there is a relationship between juvenile social play and reproductive success in a wild animal.
For years, researchers observed the behavior of juvenile male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia. They used long-term behavioral and genetic data from these dolphins to investigate the role of juvenile social play in developing adult male reproductive behavior. The team found that juvenile male dolphins with strong social bonds practiced adult-like reproductive behaviors when playing together.
“We found that juvenile play involves immature versions of adult reproductive behaviors that are crucial for males to access and mate with estrous females, and the time spent doing these play behaviors predicts how many offspring males eventually sire as adults,” explained lead author Katy Holmes of the University of Western Australia.
As adults, male dolphins in Shark Bay form long-term alliances to secure access to females. These alliances are influenced by their juvenile play and bonds with their future allies, years before they become sexually mature. Identifying this behavior is compelling evidence for the idea that animals play together to practice behaviors that will be important for them as adults.
“Our work is exciting because historically it has been notoriously difficult to link play behavior to reproductive success, in this case the number of sired offspring, in wild animals,” said Holmes.