This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For Belding's ground squirrels, adult females are more likely to survive from year to year if they live near more adult female kin—but neither males nor young females get the same boost from nearby family. Jill Mateo and colleagues at the University of Chicago, U.S., report these findings on Nov. 4, 2026, in the journal PLOS One.
Belding's ground squirrels are hibernating rodents that live in the mountains of California, Nevada and Oregon. While young males leave home to find new territories, females stay put and live in communal family groups. The female kin alert each other to danger and protect each other's offspring from infanticide.
To identify factors that improve the odds of survival in Belding's ground squirrels, the study's authors analyzed two decades of mark-recapture data, in which researchers tagged squirrels and checked the subsequent year to see if they survived. Specifically, they looked at the impact of age, sex, weight, number of offspring, the number of nearby family members and certain hormones. Researchers also took into account annual snowfall.
The analysis showed that, as expected, heavier individuals were more likely to survive hibernation. Females had higher survival rates than males, with juvenile males experiencing the highest mortality. For adult females, the odds of surviving increased with the number of other adult female family members living nearby.
This may be because they can share the burden of defending their territory and spend more time foraging. Young females did not experience the same benefits from nearby female relatives, however, likely because they faced stiffer competition for food and burrows. The researchers also showed that a short snowy season allowed the squirrels to emerge earlier from hibernation, which increased the survival of juvenile animals and helped adult females to have more offspring.
Together, these results show that an animal's social structure, physiological state and response to the climate all interact to shape its survival—depending on its sex and life stage. The findings also highlight the importance of having larger kin groups for female Belding's ground squirrels, a unique finding among mammals, where strong social bonds enhance longevity, especially for females. The authors point out that understanding these interactions will be increasingly important in the future, as snowfall declines across much of the Belding's ground squirrels' range due to climate change.
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