Heres how female hyenas avoid incest

Researchers have now uncovered the effective rules that female hyenas employ to prevent incest with closely related males.

Washington, August 16 : Researchers have now uncovered the effective rules that female hyenas employ to prevent incest with closely related males.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield in the UK and Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin, Germany, have found that female hyenas avoid inbreeding with their male relatives by causing them to leave their birth group.

Inbreeding can be hazardous to a population because it weakens the gene pool by escalating the likelihood of inheriting harmful traits. Animals generally avoid inbreeding by either moving away from home or, like humans, learning who their relatives are and avoid mating with them.

Until now, little was known about why the males and not the females decided to move away from home. But, the new research on spotted hyenas has shown that it the young female hyenas' choice of mate that impels male hyenas to leave their own clan.

The study shows that female hyenas prefer mating with males that immigrate from other clans, or with younger males that were born after they were.

Older females were also found to mate with immigrants, favouring those who had built friendly relationships with them for several years.

These female preferences mean that most male hyenas end up leaving the group they were born into for other groups where females are less picky and more receptive.

The research showed that males by and large chose groups with the highest number of young females, giving them access to many females and allowing them to sire a higher number of offspring in the long term. Most males end up dispersing because a higher number of young females usually occur elsewhere, rather than in the group in which they were raised.

"This is the first time a study has shown that in mammal species the system is driven by females using very simple rules to avoid breeding incestuously," Nature quoted study team member Terry Burke of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, as saying.

Dr Oliver H�ner from the IZW added: "The results of the study were only possible because we were able to monitor the decisions made by male hyenas in all eight resident hyena groups on the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater. Through this research we could genetically determine paternity for most offspring produced in a 10-year monitoring period."

The research has been published in Nature magazine.

ANI