Social Wild Mongooses Avoid Inbreeding by Choosing Cousins Over Sisters

How do wild mongooses avoid inbreeding? That's a good question. Now, scientists have discovered that these small mammals are able to discriminate between relatives and non-relatives and actually choose non-relatives as mates within their closely related social group.

The researchers have been observing wild banded mongooses for years to understand how they avoid the negative aspects of inbreeding. In this case, they found that while most social animals avoid inbreeding by either no breeding or dispersing to a group of non-relatives, male banded mongooses avoid inbreeding by focusing their mating efforts toward females within their extended family to which they are least related.

But how do they know? The researchers believe that the mongooses may use scent or their highly individual cells in order to gauge relatedness.

"Wild animals are known to use a variety of tactics to avoid the costs associated with inbreeding but most of these tactics involve dispersal or waiting to encounter an unrelated immigrant," said Jennifer Sanderson, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Our study has shown that both male and female banded mongooses are able to avoid inbreeding while mating within their family group even in the absence of immigration."

The researchers collected thousands of genetic samples from the Ugandan mongooses that they monitored. In the end, they found that inbreeding almost never occurs.

"We've used a combination of behavioral observations and genetic analyses to investigate possible tactics of inbreeding avoidance in both male and female banded mongooses," said Professor Cant of the University of Exeter, who leads the Banded Mongoose Research Project. "It's not just the males who actively avoid mating with relatives; we also found that female banded mongooses may avoid inbreeding by upgrading from related mate-guards to unrelated mating partners."

The findings are published in the journal Molecular Ecology.

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