New paper alert! Our study on consistent individual variation in Sumatran orangutan maternal behaviour is out today in @royalsocietypublishing.org! Using ~6000h of observation, we show that mothers are not all the same when it comes to parenting. (1/n) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... - ThreadSky

revathe.bsky.social • 10 days ago

New paper alert! Our study on consistent individual variation in Sumatran orangutan maternal behaviour is out today in @royalsocietypublishing.org! Using ~6000h of observation, we show that mothers are not all the same when it comes to parenting. (1/n)
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0443

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revathe.bsky.social•10 days ago

There is a rich body of work on how social, ecological, and biological characteristics predict maternal behaviour at the population level. In our study, we focused on individuals as a source of variation - building on the groundwork laid in the late 20th century.

revathe.bsky.social•10 days ago

We show that over the developmental period (~8 years), mothers differ from one another in four maternal behaviours. They remained consistent in these differences across their different infants and even when we accounted for the various predictors of maternal behaviour.

revathe.bsky.social•10 days ago

So, on average, mothers are different from one another, but what about their behavioural trajectories - or plasticity - during infant development? Well, we found that mothers consistently differed from one another in how they adjusted their behaviour as their infants grew!

revathe.bsky.social•10 days ago

Cautionary tale: Some studies investigating individual variation do not control for confounding factors, so we asked what the associated risks are. For this, we first investigated which factors predicted maternal behaviour (published last year in IJP).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10764-024-00435-5

revathe.bsky.social•10 days ago

We then fit 2 sets of models - one where we controlled for all the known confounding effects and one where we didn't. Not controlling for them led to false +ve or false -ve individual variation. There are a lot of factors that can affect the estimation of individual variation or "personality"!

revathe.bsky.social•10 days ago

TL;DR: Not all orangutan mothers raise their infants the same way. Using 15 y of data, we found that mothers consistently differ in how they care for their infants, even when we control for confounding factors. Our results suggest that orangutans may have individual maternal personalities.

hansraj88.bsky.social•10 days ago

Nice! Congratulations, Revathe.

revathe.bsky.social•10 days ago

Thanks, Hansraj!

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