Science at UM [S05-ep04]: Sexual dominance under threat
This week in Science at UM, Elise Huchard from the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences in Montpellier (Isem) talks to us about sexual dominance in primates. The report takes us to ISEM's palynology platform in the company of Sylvie Rouland. A program broadcast every Wednesday on the radio station Divergence.
It has long been considered obvious that, whether in grammar or society, the masculine prevails over the feminine. And what better way to establish dominance than to enshrine it as a biological fact, or even a law? Thus, in the animal kingdom, males are said to dominate females by nature.
A few counterexamples have been cited to counter this argument from authority, such as the matriarchy of elephants, the dysmorphism of hyenas in favor of females, or worse, the voracious appetite of praying mantises. But these exceptions only served to confirm the rule: male domination is a rule of nature.
On closer inspection, this male dominance is far from the norm, and in many primate species, females do not allow themselves to be pushed around. So are there social structures, lifestyles, and biological factors that favor the dominance of one sex over the other? Is the dominance relationship mandatory? And what evolutionary paths can lead a species to practice one type of dominance rather than another? A team of French and German researchers attempted to answer these questions by compiling existing studies on the subject.
Elise Huchard, an ethologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences in Montpellier, is part of this team. They published this meta-analysis on variations in male-female dominance in primates in the journal PNAS, entitled The evolution of male-female dominance relationships in primate societies.
Read also:
Observing the mourning of chacma baboons, an article from Lum magazine discussing the work of Elise Huchard, which you can also listen to in the program From the mourning of chacma baboons to the anatomy conservatory.
In the second part of the program, we remain at ISEM for our second report and head to the palynology lab, which, contrary to what its name might suggest, is the study of pollen grains. Sylvie Rouland shows us how to extract pollen grains from sediments and then identify them under a microscope. With nearly 30,000 taxa, ISEM's reference collection is one of the largest palynological collections in the world.
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Co-production: Divergence FM / University of Montpellier
Host: Lucie Lecherbonnier
Interview: Lucie Lecherbonnier / Aline Périault
Reporting: Aline Périault
Production: Alice Rollet
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