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I was watching a documentary about Meerkats the other day and one thing that stuck out to me was how the Mother of a family will banish her daughters once they reach adolescence. If the daughters try to return to the family then the mother will viciously attack said daughter, it's quite sad.

Anyway, the reason for this makes sense (in terms of evolution) because if the adolescent Meerkat were to fall pregnant, she would need more food & support from the clan, thus jeopardizing the original Mother's chance of survival.

I think this is an example of animal behavior/population control where there can only be 1 mature female in the group, like there is with bees. Am I correct in assuming this? Do all animals show this behavior for the same reasons? Also is there a general term that can be applied to this phenomenon?

Jalapeno
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The reason the dominant female doesn't want her daughter to breed is that she would prefer her own children survive, rather than her grandchildren (the children of her daughter). I wouldn't call this population control - the dominant female isn't thinking to control the group size, rather, to monopolise the group composition. The difference with bees is that the genetic relationship between the individuals is more complex (haplodiploid), so the female bees are more closely related to their sisters than to their own offspring! The general term for the fact that only some animals are taking part in breeding is "reproductive skew".

Arik Kershenbaum
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