Are titis genetically monogamous?
Our results indicate that coppery titis are genetically monogamous. All sampled social fathers were identified as genetic fathers of all offspring in their respective family groups (18 offspring in 9 groups, 1 to 5 offspring per group; Supplementary Table 1). Of 8 sampled social mothers, 7 were identified as genetic mothers of all offspring in their family groups (17 offspring in 7 groups, 1 to 5 offspring per group). The adult female of Group 4 was found not to be the genetic mother of the group’s offspring; they did not share the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotype and had 11 allelic mismatches. However, the social father of this offspring was identified as the genetic father. No other female was identified as the most likely mother for this offspring or shared a mtDNA haplotype with it.
All assignments were made with a 95% confidence level in Cervus software and confirmed with Colony software (Supplementary Table 1). The assignments did not change when the set of known mother-offspring pairs was excluded from the priors. Colony also yielded strong support for full-sib relationships between all offspring from the same groups, confirming correct parentage assignments. Across all assigned parent-offspring dyads, we found only two cases of allelic mismatches: father-daughter dyad from Group 1, mismatched at locus chr10a, and father-daughter dyad from Group 9, mismatched at locus chrXa (Supplementary Table 1).