Washington, Oct 8 : Almost 70 percent of female alligators chose to remain with their partner, often for many years, a new study has revealed.

The 10-year-study was conducted by scientists from the Savannah River Ecology Lab (SREL) in North Carolina.

The team, led by Travis Glenn, Ruth Elsey, Tracey Tuberville and Stacey Lance, spent a decade examining the mating system of alligators living at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge (RWR).

Once they had successfully re-trapped a female they recognised the potential to examine individual behaviour over multiple mating seasons and could determine if mate fidelity or pair bonding occurs.

"Given how incredibly open and dense the alligator population is at RWR we didn't expect to find fidelity," said Lance.

"To actually find that 70 percent of our re-trapped females showed mate fidelity was really incredible. I don't think any of us expected that the same pair of alligators that bred together in 1997 would still be breeding together in 2005 and may still be producing nests together to this day."

This discovery gives new insight into the complex mating system of alligators. Parental care is typically lacking in most reptiles, but not crocodiles which display parental care by nurturing their young ones and defending the nest.

However, while the females at RWR move freely through male territories, leading to high mate encounter rates, this study reveals that many alligators choose to mate with the same partner over many mating seasons.

This amounts to the first evidence for partial mate fidelity in any crocodilian species and reveals a similarity in mating patterns between alligators and bird species.

These findings were published in Molecular Ecology. (IANS)