Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Pablo Santos for his invaluable support during an early
stage of the project and Dr. Stuart Patterson for his mindful comments
on the manuscript. We are grateful to the Kalahari Research Trust and
the Kalahari Meerkat Project for access to facilities and habituated
animals in the Kuruman River Reserve, South Africa. This paper has
relied on records of individual identities and/or life histories
maintained by the Kalahari Meerkat Project, which has been supported by
the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation programme (Research Grant Nos 294494 and
742808 to T.H. Clutton-Brock since 1/7/2012), the Human Frontier Science
Program (funding reference RGP0051/2017), the University of Zurich, the
Swiss National Science Foundation and the Mammal Research Institute at
the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Research for this study was
conducted with permission of the ethical committee of Pretoria
University and the Northern Cape Conservation Service, South Africa
(Permit number: EC031-13, FAUNA 1020-2016). The study is funded by the
German Research Foundation to S. Sommer (DFG SO 428/15-1).