Sociality implies a number of individuals living and/or interacting together, which can lead to complex social relationships and structure (Wey, Blumstein, Shen, & Jordán, 2008). In terms of my research, I am going to focus on male relationships and the different strategies that they may adopt depending on social structure and environmental pressures.

 

In general terms, males have to compete with each other for food, females or other resources, but in the case of the females, it is more difficult because fertilizations cannot be shared. This may induce male mice to not create cooperative behaviour. Male relationships are characterized by competition, aggression, intolerance and a lack of cooperation (Ostner & Schülke, 2014), so what are the reasons for male sociality? Males of a variety of species form cooperative coalitions for the purpose of reproduction, and such affiliations can increase their individual’s reproduction success  by attacking another group of males to conquer females (baboons, Bercovitch, 1988; lions, Grinnell, Packer, & Pusey, 1995), controlling a bigger herd of females (dolphins, Connor, Smolker, & Richards, 1992) or  increasing their attractiveness towards females (for example long-tailed manikins join other males singing to increase their reproductive success: McDonald, 1989 Because of that, individuals can form coalitions, and it can tell us why males can benefit of living together.

 

The aim of this project is to describe how males of a wild mouse population interact with each other, looking at how the social networks change over time, specifically with who they spend time depending kinship and seasonality and which benefits they obtain from that. Regarding this question I will analyze how group size and kinship affects their social structure and their reproductive success.​