Multi-male group
type of social organization
Basic requirements of individual primates include obtaining food, avoiding predators, and reproducing. When these basic requirements are best pursued in the company of others, groups will form. Multi-male groups, also known as multi-male/multi-female, are a type of social organization where the group contains more than one adult male, more than one adult female, and offspring. This structure is characterized by group living (as opposed to solitary), polygynandrous, and strong reproductive competition among males, which could result in an uneven division of male reproductive success (i.e. reproductive skew). There are no stable heterosexual bonds as both males and females have a number of different mates. Multi-male groups are common among semi-terrestrial primates, like savanna baboons, macaques, colobus and some New World monkeys.
Avoiding predators
A factor influencing the number of males in a group may be to avoid predators, as a study found significant positive correlations between the number of males in a group and the predation risk where the group lived. Another study found that there is a significant positive correlation between the number of males per female and the estimated predation rate. This finding may reflect the adaptive advantage to females of tolerating multiple males that provide vigilance and predator defense.
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