Journal
HORMONES AND BEHAVIOR
Volume 64, Issue 2, Pages 240-249Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2013.02.014
Keywords
Puberty; Maturation; Baboons; Growth; Reproductive hormones; Sex differences; Ecological differences; Socio-demographic differences; Genetic differences
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation
- National Institute of Aging [R01AG034513-01, P01AG031719]
- Princeton Center for the Demography of Aging [P30AG024361]
- Chicago Zoological Society
- Max Planck Institute for Demography
- L.S.B. Leakey Foundation
- National Geographic Society
- [IBN 9985910]
- [IBN 0322613]
- [IBN 0322781]
- [BCS 0323553]
- [BCS 0323596]
- [DEB 0846286]
- [DEB 0846532]
- [IOS 0919200]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Integrative Organismal Systems [0919200] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0846286, 0846532] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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This article is part of a Special Issue Puberty and Adolescence. The onset of reproduction is preceded by a host of organismal adjustments and transformations, involving morphological, physiological, and behavioral changes. In highly social mammals, including humans and most nonhuman primates, the timing and nature of maturational processes are affected by the animal's social milieu as well as its ecology. Here, we review a diverse set of findings on how maturation unfolds in wild baboons in the Amboseli basin of southern Kenya, and we place these findings in the context of other reports of maturational processes in primates and other mammals. First, we describe the series of events and processes that signal maturation in female and male baboons. Sex differences in age at both sexual maturity and first reproduction documented for this species are consistent with expectations of life history theory; males mature later than females and exhibit an adolescent growth spurt that is absent or minimal in females. Second, we summarize what we know about sources of variance in the timing of maturational processes including natal dispersal. In Amboseli, individuals in a food-enhanced group mature earlier than their wild-feeding counterparts, and offspring of high-ranking females mature earlier than offspring of low-ranking females. We also report on how genetic admixture, which occurs in Amboseli between two closely related baboon taxa, affects individual maturation schedules. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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