How to be a good partner and father? The role of adult males in pair bond maintenance and parental care in Javan gibbons.

In pair-living species, female and male pairs may maintain stable social bonds by adjusting spatial and social associations. Nevertheless, each sex invests differently to maintain the pair bond, and the investment can depend on the presence of paternal care or 'male services.' While most species live in pairs, the sex responsible for pair bond maintenance in gibbons is still controversial. We investigated pair bond maintenance and parental care in three pairs of wild Javan gibbons in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park, Indonesia, for over 21 months. We found that Javan gibbon fathers groomed their offspring more than adult females, especially as offspring got older. While both parents increased playing time with offspring when offspring became older and more independent, fathers played with offspring 20 times more than mothers on average. Grooming within Javan gibbon pairs was male-biased, suggesting that pair bond maintenance was heavily the job of males. However, offspring age as a proxy for paternal care did not affect the pair bond maintenance. Our study highlights that adult male Javan gibbons may have an important role in pair bond maintenance and the care of juveniles.

Do Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) use fruiting synchrony as a foraging strategy?

Tropical rainforests are characterized by a high diversity of plant species. Each plant species presents with differential phenological patterns in fruit production. In some species, all individual trees produce fruit simultaneously within clustered periods; whereas in others, each individual tree fruits at irregular time intervals. By observing this pattern, some primate species use the presence of fruits in one tree as a cue to find fruit in other trees of the same synchronously fruiting tree species. Here, we investigated whether the highly frugivorous Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park in Indonesia have knowledge of synchronous characteristics of fruiting trees and whether they can further distinguish fruit species with different synchrony levels, that is, tree species with highly synchronous fruiting patterns versus tree species with less synchronous fruiting patterns. Across 12 months we collected biweekly phenological data on 250 trees from 10 fruit species and observed Javan gibbons' visits to those species. We found that a fruit discovery in the beginning of fruiting seasons triggered gibbons to visit trees of the same fruit species. However, gibbons' visit rates did not differ between highly synchronous and asynchronous species. Our results suggest that Javan gibbons have knowledge of synchronous characteristics of fruiting trees in general, but they do not differentiate highly synchronous versus asynchronous fruit species. We speculate that Javan gibbons, who live in relatively small ranges with very low tree density of preferred fruit species, are likely able to track and remember fruiting states of individual trees without needing to distinguish fruit species with different synchrony levels. Moreover, gibbons may make little benefit of distinguishing highly synchronous versus asynchronous fruit species, probably due to gibbons' heavy use of asynchronous figs. Our study provides an insight into how gibbon's foraging strategies may have been shaped in response to their ecological environment.

Intra-group competition and social dynamics regarding dispersal and maturation in wild Javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch).

Natal dispersal is an important life-history trait in all animal taxa. In pair-living species, parent-offspring competition derived from the offspring's maturity can motivate the natal dispersal of offspring. However, not much has been known about the dispersal mechanisms of pair-living gibbons. To test food and mate competition as potential reasons for dispersal, we investigated the effect of the offspring age and sex on relationships between parents and offspring in wild Javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch) in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park, Indonesia. We collected behavioral data for two years between 2016 and 2019. We found that aggression from parents toward offspring increased in both feeding and non-feeding context as the offspring got older. Offspring received more aggression from the parent of the same sex in the general context. While offspring decreased co-feeding and grooming time with parents as they got older, there was no change in the proximity and approach to parents. The results imply the presence of both intra-group food and mate competition which increase with the offspring's age. We highlight that increased competition between maturing offspring and parents changes their social relationships and peripheralizes offspring from the natal group which will eventually motivate offspring to disperse in Javan gibbons.