Early life maternal sociality predicts juvenile sociality in blue monkeys

Maternal effects are widespread in living organisms though little is known about whether they shape individual affiliative social behavior in primates. Further, it remains a question whether maternal effects on affiliative behavior differ by offspring sex, as they do in other physiological systems, especially in species with high levels of adult sexual dimorphism and divergence in social niches. We explored how direct and indirect experiences of maternal affiliative behavior during infancy predicted affiliative behavior approximately 1–6 years later during the juvenile period, using behavioral data from 41 wild blue monkey juveniles and their 29 mothers, and controlling for individual age, sex, and maternal rank. Female juveniles spent less time grooming with any partner and with peers the more maternal grooming they received during infancy, whereas males groomed more with any partner and with peers. Similarly, the more that mothers groomed with other adult females during subjects’ infancy, female subjects played less with peers, and male subjects played more as juveniles. Further, this maternal effect on social behavior appears specific to early life, as the same aspects of mothers’ sociality measured throughout subjects’ development did not predict juvenile behavior. Overall, our results suggest that both direct and indirect experience of mother's affiliative behavior during infancy influence an individual's affiliation later in life that sexes respond differently to the maternal affiliation, and that the first year of life is a critical window.