Nutritional needs and social bonds: how early-life dependencies shape meerkat sociality

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Though there has been considerable research on overall social structures, the dynamics of how an individual's social niche develops during early life and how biological needs of offspring shape sociality have received less attention. In this study, we took a longitudinal approach targeting the developmental period from nutritional dependency to independent foraging, and toward sexual maturity, to assess within-group sociality of a cooperative mammal, Kalahari meerkats (Suricata suricatta). First, we describe within-group social dynamics during foraging with a focus on separating individual- from dyad-specific features. Second, we use these two sociality features to identify formation of social relationships during development. By combining proximity scans with data on social interactions from focal follows, we investigated the behaviours driving the observed social interactions. The strength of dyadic relationships between pups and adults was highest during pups’ nutritional dependence and was positively linked to pup-care behaviours initiated by both adults and pups themselves. The strength of these dyadic relationships decreased after nutritional independence. During early ontogeny, meerkat pups rely heavily on food provisions for survival and learning of their species-specific diet to develop their independent foraging skills. As such, our findings indicate that the ontogeny of social relationships in meerkats is shaped by the socio-ecology of cooperative pup care rather than a need for building long-term individualized relationships. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2663P Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences Social ontogeny, meerkats, sociality, Dyadic Interactions, Gregariousness, Foraging Needs, Nutritional Dependence Published: 2025-06-17 23:15 Last Updated: 2026-01-13 21:05 CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Data and Code Availability Statement: Open data/code are not yet available. Language: English