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Resumo

Mother's milk provides building blocks necessary for infant development and growth postnatally. Minerals in milk are particularly important for infant skeletal development and may reflect maternal characteristics that are associated with the capacity to synthesize milk and sex‐specific developmental priorities of the infant. Using a large sample of mother–infant dyads assigned to the outdoor breeding colony at the California National Primate Research Center (N=104), we investigated the relationship of milk calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) concentrations and the ratio ofCa/Pto maternal and infant characteristics and to other milk variables.CaandPare largely associated with casein micelles, and as expected, bothCaandPwere positively correlated with protein concentrations in milk. NeitherCanorPconcentrations were associated with maternal parity. Mothers rearing daughters tended to produce higher meanCaconcentration in milk, and consequently a higherCa/Pratio, than did mothers rearing sons, even though protein concentration was not elevated. These results suggest that theCa/Pratio in rhesus milk may have been under separate selective pressure from protein content to facilitate the accelerated rate of skeletal calcification that has been observed in femaleMacaca mulattainfants. Am J Phys Anthropol 151:144–150, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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