Abstract
Benson Ginsburg’s early studies of canid socialization and wolf social and reproductive behavior were focused, in part, on the degree to which there was flexibility in social development and specifically whether there was a critical period during development after which wolf pups could not be socialized to humans. My focus was the degree to which differences in canid ecology and social structure were correlated with differences in the plasticity of social and reproductive behavior, including development. Canid species are unusual among the Mammalia in being primarily monogamous. Males may play an indirect or direct role in parental care, depending on a species degree of sociality. Canid species also differ in developmental parameters, and reproductive suppression is common in the group-living pack hunters. I review comparative studies of the social and reproductive behavior of three South American canids which vary in their degree of sociality and explore the degree to which the species are ecologically and socially flexible.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Benson Ginsburg for giving me a start in canid research and supporting my interests so completely. Without the opportunities he provided, my career would have gone in a very different direction. I also wish to thank George and Mary Rabb for introducing me to the complexities of life within a wolf pack. I would also like to thank those colleagues that contributed so much to the canid studies, especially: Maxeen Biben, Chuck Brady, James Dietz, John Eisenberg, Ingrid Porton, and Melissa Rodden. These studies were supported by grants from the Smithsonian Research Foundation and NIMH 27241-03.
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Edited by Stephen Maxson. Correspondence to: Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Stoors, CT 06269-1020, USA. email: Stephen.Maxson@UConn.Edu.
The paper originated in a festschrift, Nurturing the Genome, to honor Benson E. Ginsburg on June 2, 2002 and is part of a special issue of Behavior Genetics based on that festschrift. Devra G. Klieman passed away in 2010, and her paper is published posthumously.
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Kleiman, D.G. Canid Mating Systems, Social Behavior, Parental Care and Ontogeny: Are they Flexible?. Behav Genet 41, 803–809 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-011-9459-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-011-9459-0