Genetic relatedness does not predict racoon social network structure
Highlights
► We tested what factors influence racoon social proximity networks: age, sex, genetic relatedness and home range overlap. ► Age and kinship had no effect on social networks. ► Male–male associations influenced social networks during some months. ► Racoon association patterns appear unpredictable based on age, sex and relatedness.
Section snippets
Study Area
Fieldwork was conducted in a 20 ha area within the 1499 ha Ned Brown Forest Preserve in suburban Cook County, IL, U.S.A. (for further details, see: Prange et al. 2003). The size of the study area was determined by the local density of racoons, as it was important to monitor all, or nearly all, resident racoons (Prange et al. 2011). The high densities of racoons found at this site (40–70 racoons/km2) were likely due to an abundance of artificial food sources available from garbage cans (Prange
Results
Racoons spent an average ± SD of 96.58 ± 159.77 min per day in close proximity to other racoons (range 0–936 min). The average ± SD pairwise home range overlap between racoons in our social networks was 23 ± 21.01% (range 0–80%), and racoon home ranges in our study area ranged from 25.2 to 52.8 ha (Prange et al. 2004). The average ± SD pairwise genetic relatedness between racoons was 0.011 ± 0.134, and 16% of dyads were closely related (r > 0.125). Average pairwise relatedness did not differ significantly with
Discussion
In general, very few of the factors that we measured affected the structure of racoon social networks. We found that racoon social network structure was not influenced by genetic relatedness or age. During some months outside the mating season, male–male homophily was a significant predictor of racoon network structure. Neither age nor genetic relatedness was a significant predictor variable shaping these male–male interactions. This result is consistent with Gehrt et al. (2008), who found that
Acknowledgments
This project was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (ID-0425203), Cook County Animal and Rabies Control and the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation. We thank the Cook County Forest Preserve District and C. Anchor for access to our study site, and are especially grateful for the support of D. Parmer (deceased). We also thank The Ohio State University's Terrestrial Wildlife Ecology Lab for support. Genetic analysis was conducted at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, IL under the supervision
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