Pascal Gagneux, David S. Woodruff & Christophe Boesch
Nature 387, 358–359 (1997).
In this genetic analysis of a community of chimpanzees in the Taï forest, Côte d'Ivoire (carried out in 1994), we concluded that 7 out of 13 offspring were sired by males not found in the mother's social group. Now a study of paternity using quantified and automated methods shows that the incidence of extra-group paternity is much lower (1 out of 14 offspring; ref. 1). Direct comparison at the only satellite locus re-examined reveals that 10 out of 66 alleles (15%) and 9 out of 33 individuals (27%) were inaccurately genotyped. Possible sources of error in the first study include allelic dropout in the amplification of degraded DNA from field-collected samples of shed hair, inconsistent visual autoradiograph interpretation (stutter bands), contamination and sample mix-up. The new analysis confirms that extra-group paternity can occur in nature, but shows that the social community probably corresponds to the reproductive unit in chimpanzees.
References
Vigilant, L., Hofreiter, M., Siedel, H. & Boesch, C. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 98, 12890–12895 (2001).
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The online version of the original article can be found at 10.1038/387358a0
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Correction: Furtive mating in female chimpanzees. Nature 414, 508 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35107148
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35107148
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