Male Mate Choice in Lemur catta

Generally, females are the more selective sex because of their greater parental investment. However, it would benefit males to exercise mate choice for two reasons: (1) if male reproductive success is limited by more factors than simply the number of female mates and (2) if females differ in quality- or more specifically in their reproductive potential. Both of these factors must be in place for the male mate selection to be evolutionary advantageous.

If females differ in reproductive potential, males might exercise some degree of mate choice because of one or more factors that put an upper limit to male reproductive success. Males must operate under time constraints, as well as possibly dwindling energy or sperm reserves, or both. Males that exercise mate selectivity might therefore have a reproductive advantage by allocating their time, sperm, and energy wisely. Given the reproductive characteristics of the species, male mate selectivity is theoretically probable, as the criteria
that would select for male mate selectivity appear to be in place in Lemur catta.

A mother with her offspring. The father doesn't do much to help raise them.

Sperm depletion is another potential limiting factor for male reproductive success, for female ring-tailed lemurs cycle asynchronously, but in close temporal proximity. All troop females enter estrus within 1–3 wk of one another. Even if a male mates only once with each female that comes into estrus, he can potentially ejaculate many times per wk during the short breeding period. In the wild, males mate with extratroop females, which even further increases a male’s number of potential mates, and ejaculations, over a short time. Whether or not frequent ejaculations in ring-tailed lemurs can lead to notably decreased sperm reserves enough to limit male reproductive success appreciably is open to debate. Lemur catta males may be evolutionarily adapted to ejaculate frequently and produce adequate amounts of sperm over a short time.

For male mate selectivity to be adaptive, it is not enough that one or more factors limit male reproductive success. Females must also differ among each other with respect to mate quality—more specifically, their reproductive potential. Female fecundity differs among individuals as a function of one or more traits, such as dominance status. The highest-ranking female in a troop is responsible for the greatest number of agonistic interactions, most of which are over priority of access to food resources.

In traditional investigations of mate choice in females, scoring mating preferences requires that females reject some males as mates and accept others. However, one cannot apply the scoring system to male ring-tailed lemurs because they do not decline opportunities to mate with a female unless it is during the day of a female’s estrus, and they have already ejaculated once with her. Because males are less selective in their sexual preferences than females does not mean that it male mate choice does not occur.


Consequently, only females for which estrus was observed with at least one or more male mounting with intromission contributed to the analyses. Males aggressively mate guard females before and after mating, and other males frequently harass them during copulation, which involves several mounts with intromission before ejaculation. Given the strong correlation between female reproductive success and dominance status in 2000 when the two matrilines comprised the troop, males may expend the greatest mating effort for females that have high reproductive success, high dominance status, or both.

Using male mating effort as a proxy for male mate choice, it was found that males did not prefer all females equally as mates; they expended significantly more male-male aggression during the estrus of only certain females.

  Parga, J. Male Mate Choice in Lemur catta. International Journal of Primatology. Vol 27, No. 1, 107-131