Hadad Ezra, Balaban Amir, Yosef Reuven
Israel Nature and Parks Authority, 3 Am Ve'Olamo Street, Jerusalem 95463, Israel.
Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, Tel Aviv 66186, Israel.
Animals (Basel). 2023 Jun 8;13(12):1914. doi: 10.3390/ani13121914.
In an ongoing study of the striped hyena (), we observed that in the nine different females, alloparenting by the daughters of a previous litter was not uncommon and occurred on fifteen different occasions, twice with two helpers. Alloparenting persisted from when the cubs are approximately a month old until they reach the age when they go out foraging with their mothers at 10-12 months. Helpers perform most maternal duties, except suckling, even in the mother's presence. Helpers accrued indirect fitness and practiced parenting before reaching sexual maturity. Future studies must study the reproductive biology of the striped hyena in the wild throughout its geographic range to elucidate additional breeding properties that have not yet been identified. The continued persecution of striped hyenas and the lack of information about their breeding rituals and capabilities in the wild mean that this study of their different reproduction strategies, focusing on surrogate mothers, is of great conservation importance. The fact that we have found cooperative breeding in this solitary species suggests that there is much more to uncover of the enigmatic striped hyena in the wild.
在一项正在进行的条纹鬣狗研究中，我们观察到，在九只不同的雌性条纹鬣狗中，前一窝的雌性后代进行异亲抚育的情况并不罕见，共出现了15次，其中有两次是两只帮手共同抚育。异亲抚育行为从幼崽大约一个月大时开始，一直持续到它们10至12个月大与母亲外出觅食的年龄。帮手承担了除哺乳之外的大部分母性职责，即便母亲就在身边。帮手在达到性成熟之前积累了间接适合度并实践了育儿行为。未来的研究必须在整个地理范围内对野生条纹鬣狗的生殖生物学进行研究，以阐明尚未被发现的其他繁殖特性。条纹鬣狗持续遭受迫害，且缺乏关于它们在野外繁殖习性和能力的信息，这意味着这项聚焦于代孕母亲的不同繁殖策略研究具有重大的保护意义。我们在这种独居物种中发现合作繁殖这一事实表明，在野外，神秘的条纹鬣狗还有许多有待揭示的奥秘。
