In mammals, males are usually stronger and more competitive than females. Males also show greater inequality in reproductive success – the number of offspring they produce – than females. In spotted hyenas, the opposite is true: reproductive inequality is greater in females than in males. The reason? Female spotted hyenas pass on their social rank and the associated privileges such as priority access to food to their offspring, whereas males do not. These are the findings of a new study on spotted hyenas spanning eight generations across eight clans in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, carried out by the Ngorongoro Hyena Project of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin (Leibniz-IZW) and the Institut des Sciences de l’Évolution de Montpellier (ISEM). The study is published in the journal “Science Advances” and may explain why females are the more competitive sex in some species.

An international study led by researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) reveals that Indigenous, African and Afro-descendant communities relied more heavily on marine resources, while communities of immigrants from Germany consumed mainly plant species and terrestrial products.