Female matrilines and male partnerships: long-term social dynamics of African lions

Lion prides consist of related females, their offspring and a coalition of adult males that has entered from elsewhere. Female matrilines usually persist for generations whereas coalitions only persist for a single generation. Female territoriality focuses on key landscape features that enhance access to prey, water and denning sites, while male defence of that space is primarily driven by maintaining exclusive access to those females. Both sexes show fission–fusion grouping patterns but remain in contact with each other by long-distance vocalizations. Female sociality in lions derives from their relatively high population abundance combined with the heterogeneity of savannah habitat compared to the lower population abundance and homogeneous forested habitat found in other large felids. Male lions form coalitions because of the synchronous breeding of females that results from the infanticidal behaviour of incoming coalitions.