scholarly journals Occurrence and Evolution of Cooperative Breeding Among the Diurnal Raptors (Accipitridae and Falconidae)

The Auk ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 717-729
Author(s):  
Rebecca T. Kimball ◽  
Patricia G. Parker ◽  
James C. Bednarz
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Adult Males ◽  
Delayed Dispersal ◽  
Nest Sites ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Species Groups ◽  
Related Individuals ◽  
Single Nest

Abstract Cooperative breeding, in which more than two individuals live in a group and raise offspring, usually in a single nest, is found in only 3% of avian species. On the basis of a review of the literature, we found reports of groups (usually trios) at nest sites in 42 species of diurnal raptors. At least one example of cooperative breeding was found in 29% of genera and 14% of species, distributed in both Accipitridae and Falconidae. Given the difficulty of obtaining behavioral observations necessary to detect cooperative breeding in most raptor species, combined with the large number of species that have been poorly studied, cooperative breeding in diurnal raptors may be more common than our data indicate. However, when data on the sex of the extra bird(s) or relationships among group members were available, patterns were quite varied. For 7 of 13 species, groups primarily contained multiple adult males, though three of those species also had groups formed from offspring that had delayed dispersal; three species had a low, but regular, occurrence of multiple females (females of groups laid eggs in the same nest); and the remaining three species were characterized by having extra birds that were yearlings or subadults. In over half of species, groups did not appear to be composed of related individuals, contrary to many cooperatively breeding passerine species where groups are primarily composed of offspring that have delayed dispersal. Our review suggests that the evolution of group living in many raptors may be independent of delayed dispersal, and that the factors important in explaining the evolution of that behavior depend upon the benefits of group living.

scholarly journals Proactive prosociality in a cooperatively breeding corvid, the azure-winged magpie ( Cyanopica cyana )

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 20160649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Horn ◽  
Clara Scheer ◽  
Thomas Bugnyar ◽  
Jorg J. M. Massen
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Over Time

One of the contemporary hypotheses concerning the evolution of human altruism is the cooperative breeding hypothesis (CBH) which has recently been tested in non-human primates. Using a similar paradigm, we investigated prosociality in a cooperatively breeding corvid, the azure-winged magpie. We found that the magpies delivered food to their group members at high rates, and unlike other corvids, they did so without any cues provided by others. In two control conditions, the magpies stopped participating over time, indicating that they learned to discriminate prosocial tests from controls. Azure-winged magpies are thus the first birds that experimentally show proactive prosociality. Our findings are in line with the CBH; however, additional corvid species need to be tested in this promising paradigm.

Grouping patterns in warthogs, Phacochoerus africanus: is communal care of young enough to explain sociality?

Behaviour ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 147 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Peacock ◽  
Angela White ◽  
Elissa Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Group Composition ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Living Will ◽  
Lifetime Reproductive Success ◽  
Adult Males ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Phacochoerus Africanus ◽  
Time Of Year ◽  
Communal Rearing

AbstractGroup-living will evolve when individuals increase their lifetime reproductive success by joining with other individuals. In cooperatively breeding societies, individuals living in a group will participate in the communal rearing of young. Several factors can influence the evolutionary trade-offs of grouping and it is often unclear whether cooperative breeding is advantageous or is simply a by-product of selection acting on grouping behaviour. We used sightings of 1318 warthogs in 711 groups to investigate whether the advantages of sociality in the warthog differ depending on an individual's age, sex, reproductive state, or the time of year. Adult males only formed temporary associations with other individuals indicating that participation in a group was not advantageous. In contrast, yearlings were almost inevitably found in groups, regardless of their sex or time of year, suggesting any costs to sociality were outweighed by the benefits. Grouping in adult female warthogs was complex; adult females were more likely to form groups in the presence of juveniles and when juveniles were at their most vulnerable stage indicating that sociality in females could be partially explained by the benefits of communal care of young. However, other factors influenced female cooperation including group composition and the time of year.

Social status influences responses to unfamiliar conspecifics in a cooperatively breeding fish

Behaviour ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 152 (12-13) ◽  
pp. 1821-1839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Y. Ligocki ◽  
Adam R. Reddon ◽  
Jennifer K. Hellmann ◽  
Constance M. O’Connor ◽  
Susan Marsh-Rollo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Cichlid Fish ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Member

In group living animals, individuals may visit other groups. The costs and benefits of such visits for the members of a group will depend on the attributes and intentions of the visitor, and the social status of responding group members. Using wild groups of the cooperatively breeding cichlid fish (Neolamprologus pulcher), we compared group member responses to unfamiliar ‘visiting’ conspecifics in control groups and in experimentally manipulated groups from which a subordinate the same size and sex as the visitor was removed. High-ranking fish were less aggressive towards visitors in removal groups than in control groups; low-ranking subordinates were more aggressive in the removal treatment. High-ranking females and subordinates the same size and sex as the visitor responded most aggressively toward the visitor in control groups. These results suggest that visitors are perceived as potential group joiners, and that such visits impose different costs and benefits on current group members.

scholarly journals Group-size-dependent punishment of idle subordinates in a cooperative breeder where helpers pay to stay

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1789) ◽  
pp. 20140184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Fischer ◽  
Markus Zöttl ◽  
Frank Groenewoud ◽  
Barbara Taborsky
Keyword(s):  
Group Size ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Breeding Systems ◽  
Idle Period ◽  
Cognitive Constraints ◽  
Size Dependent ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Large Groups

In cooperative breeding systems, dominant breeders sometimes tolerate unrelated individuals even if they inflict costs on the dominants. According to the ‘pay-to-stay’ hypothesis, (i) subordinates can outweigh these costs by providing help and (ii) dominants should be able to enforce help by punishing subordinates that provide insufficient help. This requires that dominants can monitor helping and can recognize group members individually. In a field experiment, we tested whether cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher subordinates increase their help after a forced ‘idle’ period, how other group members respond to a previously idle helper, and how helper behaviour and group responses depend on group size. Previously idle helpers increased their submissiveness and received more aggression than control helpers, suggesting that punishment occurred to enforce help. Subordinates in small groups increased their help more than those in large groups, despite receiving less aggression. When subordinates were temporarily removed, dominants in small groups were more likely to evict returning subordinates. Our results suggest that only in small groups do helpers face a latent threat of punishment by breeders as predicted by the pay-to-stay hypothesis. In large groups, cognitive constraints may prevent breeders from tracking the behaviour of a large number of helpers.

scholarly journals Isotocin neuronal phenotypes differ among social systems in cichlid fishes

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 170350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam R. Reddon ◽  
Constance M. O'Connor ◽  
Erin Nesjan ◽  
Jason Cameron ◽  
Jennifer K. Hellmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Cichlid Fish ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Evolutionary Transition ◽  
Evolution Of Sociality ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Complementary Analysis

Social living has evolved numerous times across a diverse array of animal taxa. An open question is how the transition to a social lifestyle has shaped, and been shaped by, the underlying neurohormonal machinery of social behaviour. The nonapeptide neurohormones, implicated in the regulation of social behaviours, are prime candidates for the neuroendocrine substrates of social evolution. Here, we examined the brains of eight cichlid fish species with divergent social systems, comparing the number and size of preoptic neurons that express the nonapeptides isotocin and vasotocin. While controlling for the influence of phylogeny and body size, we found that the highly social cooperatively breeding species ( n  = 4) had fewer parvocellular isotocin neurons than the less social independently breeding species ( n  = 4), suggesting that the evolutionary transition to group living and cooperative breeding was associated with a reduction in the number of these neurons. In a complementary analysis, we found that the size and number of isotocin neurons significantly differentiated the cooperatively breeding from the independently breeding species. Our results suggest that isotocin is related to sociality in cichlids and may provide a mechanistic substrate for the evolution of sociality.

scholarly journals No evidence for larger brains in cooperatively breeding cichlid fishes

2016 ◽  
Vol 94 (5) ◽  
pp. 373-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam R. Reddon ◽  
Constance M. O’Connor ◽  
Isaac Y. Ligocki ◽  
Jennifer K. Hellmann ◽  
Susan E. Marsh-Rollo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Brain Mass ◽  
Cichlid Species ◽  
Multiple Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding

The social brain hypothesis posits that frequent social interactions, characteristic of group living species, select for greater socio-cognitive abilities and the requisite neural machinery. An extension of the social brains hypothesis, known as the cooperative breeding brain hypothesis, postulates that cooperatively breeding species, which live in stable social groups and provide allocare, face particularly pronounced cognitive demands because they must recognize, remember, and differentially respond to multiple group members. These socio-cognitive challenges are thought to have selected for increased cognitive capacity, supported by a bigger brain. To test the prediction that cooperative breeders have larger brains, we performed a phylogenetically controlled comparison of the whole brain masses of adult fish from 16 closely related species of cooperatively and independently breeding lamprologine cichlid species from Lake Tanganyika. We collected data on brain mass from males of eight species of lamprologine cichlids and added this to brain mass data from eight more species found in the published literature. Controlling for body size and phylogeny, we found that cooperative breeding species did not have larger brains, and this was true of for both our field-collected data set and the expanded data set including published values. This study adds to a growing body of literature from other taxa that cast doubt on the cooperative breeding brain hypothesis.

scholarly journals Reproductive competition triggers mass eviction in cooperative banded mongooses

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1826) ◽  
pp. 20152607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faye J. Thompson ◽  
Harry H. Marshall ◽  
Jennifer L. Sanderson ◽  
Emma I. K. Vitikainen ◽  
Hazel J. Nichols ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Population Structure ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Important Determinant ◽  
Adaptive Strategy ◽  
Reproductive Competition ◽  
Structured Population ◽  
Competition Hypothesis ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Species Groups

In many vertebrate societies, forced eviction of group members is an important determinant of population structure, but little is known about what triggers eviction. Three main explanations are: (i) the reproductive competition hypothesis, (ii) the coercion of cooperation hypothesis, and (iii) the adaptive forced dispersal hypothesis. The last hypothesis proposes that dominant individuals use eviction as an adaptive strategy to propagate copies of their alleles through a highly structured population. We tested these hypotheses as explanations for eviction in cooperatively breeding banded mongooses ( Mungos mungo ), using a 16-year dataset on life history, behaviour and relatedness. In this species, groups of females, or mixed-sex groups, are periodically evicted en masse . Our evidence suggests that reproductive competition is the main ultimate trigger for eviction for both sexes. We find little evidence that mass eviction is used to coerce helping, or as a mechanism to force dispersal of relatives into the population. Eviction of females changes the landscape of reproductive competition for remaining males, which may explain why males are evicted alongside females. Our results show that the consequences of resolving within-group conflict resonate through groups and populations to affect population structure, with important implications for social evolution.

scholarly journals Social monitoring via close calls in meerkats

2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1765) ◽  
pp. 20131013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan A. Reber ◽  
Simon W. Townsend ◽  
Marta B. Manser
Keyword(s):  
Group Living ◽  
Common Mechanism ◽  
Suricata Suricatta ◽  
Social Monitoring ◽  
Current State ◽  
Dominant Female ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Living Species ◽  
Group Members ◽  
And Control

Social monitoring of the actions of group members is thought to be a key development associated with group living. Humans constantly monitor the behaviour of others and respond to them in a flexible way depending on past interactions and the current social context. While other primates have also been reported to change their behaviour towards other group members flexibly based on the current state of their relationship, empirical evidence is typically linked to contextually specific events such as aggressive or reproductive interactions. In the cooperatively breeding meerkat ( Suricata suricatta ), we investigated whether subordinate females use frequently emitted, non-agonistic close calls to monitor the location of the dominant female and whether they subsequently adjust their response based on recent social interactions during conflict and non-conflict periods. Subjects discriminated between the close calls of the dominant female and control playbacks, responding by approaching the loudspeaker and displaying submissive behaviour only if they were currently threatened by eviction. Our results suggest that meerkats assess the risk for aggressive interactions with close associates depending on social circumstances, and respond accordingly. We argue that social monitoring based on non-agonistic cues is probably a common mechanism in group-living species that allows the adjustment of behaviour depending on variation in relationships.

Acorn woodpeckers vocally discriminate current and former group members from nongroup members

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1120-1128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A Pardo ◽  
Casey E Hayes ◽  
Eric L Walters ◽  
Walter D Koenig
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Current Group ◽  
Breeding Bird ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Melanerpes Formicivorus ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Valuable Relationships ◽  
Acorn Woodpeckers

Abstract In species with long-term social relationships, the ability to recognize individuals after extended separation and the ability to discriminate between former social affiliates that have died and those that have left the group but may return are likely to be beneficial. Few studies, however, have investigated whether animals can make these discriminations. We presented acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus), a group-living, cooperatively breeding bird, with playbacks of current group members, former group members still living nearby, former group members that had died or left the study area, and familiar nongroup members. Subjects responded more quickly to the calls of nongroup members than to the calls of current group members or former group members still living in the study area but did not discriminate between nongroup members and former group members that had died or disappeared. This suggests that acorn woodpeckers can vocally recognize both current group members and former group members that have dispersed to nearby groups and that they either forget former group members that no longer live in the vicinity or classify them differently from former group members that still live nearby. This study suggests an important role for vocal recognition in maintaining valuable relationships with social affiliates postdispersal.

Cooperatively Breeding Groups of Carrion Crow(Corvus Corone Corone) in Northern Spain

The Auk ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. 790-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Baglione ◽  
José M. Marcos ◽  
Daniela Canestrari
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Northern Spain ◽  
Juvenile Dispersal ◽  
Carrion Crow ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Corvus Corone ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Breeding Groups ◽  
Mode 3 ◽  
One Year

AbstractThe Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) is almost invariably reported as a species breeding as unassisted pairs, but a population of Carrion Crows (Corvus c. corone) from northern Spain that we have been studying since 1995 regularly exhibits cooperative breeding. The Spanish population thus demonstrates that cooperative breeding can vary greatly across populations. Most of the breeding territories (73.3%) in Spain were held by cohesive groups, which consisted of up to nine birds (mode = 3 birds). The proportion of fledglings that delayed dispersal for one year varied between 12.2 and 47.5% for different cohorts. The corresponding values for juveniles postponing dispersal for two years were 4.9 and 19.2%. Philopatry was skewed toward males. Some social groups contained immigrants. Therefore, delayed juvenile dispersal was not the only route towards sociality. Up to three helpers provided food to the nestling and at least one helper was found in all the groups surveyed. However, some group members refrained from visiting nests and thus the contribution to nestling care was highly variable among individuals.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document