scholarly journals The development of individual differences in cooperative behaviour: maternal glucocorticoid hormones alter helping behaviour of offspring in wild meerkats

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Dantzer ◽  
Constance Dubuc ◽  
Ines Braga Goncalves ◽  
Dominic L. Cram ◽  
Nigel C. Bennett ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Maternal Effects ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
Glucocorticoid Hormones ◽  
Offspring Fitness ◽  
Pregnant Females ◽  
Suricata Suricatta ◽  
Parental Fitness ◽  
Helping Behaviour

AbstractThe phenotype of parents can have long-lasting effects on the development of offspring as well as on their behaviour, physiology, and morphology as adults. In some cases, these changes may increase offspring fitness but, in others, they can elevate parental fitness at a cost to the fitness of their offspring. We show that in Kalahari meerkats (Suricata suricatta), the circulating glucocorticoid (GC) hormones of pregnant females affect the growth and cooperative behaviour of their offspring. We performed a 3-year experiment in wild meerkats to test the hypothesis that GC-mediated maternal effects reduce the potential for offspring to reproduce directly and therefore cause them to exhibit more cooperative behaviour. Daughters (but not sons) born to mothers treated with cortisol during pregnancy grew more slowly early in life and exhibited significantly more of two types of cooperative behaviour (pup rearing and feeding) once they were adults compared to offspring from control mothers. They also had lower measures of GCs as they aged, which could explain the observed increases in cooperative behaviour. Because early life growth is a crucial determinant of fitness in female meerkats, our results indicate that GC-mediated maternal effects may reduce the fitness of offspring, but may elevate parental fitness as a consequence of increasing the cooperative behaviour of their daughters.

scholarly journals The development of individual differences in cooperative behaviour: maternal glucocorticoid hormones alter helping behaviour of offspring in wild meerkats

2019 ◽  
Vol 374 (1770) ◽  
pp. 20180117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Dantzer ◽  
Constance Dubuc ◽  
Ines Braga Goncalves ◽  
Dominic L. Cram ◽  
Nigel C. Bennett ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Effects ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Evolutionary Medicine ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Offspring Fitness ◽  
Pregnant Females ◽  
Suricata Suricatta ◽  
Parental Fitness ◽  
Helping Behaviour

The phenotype of parents can have long-lasting effects on the development of offspring as well as on their behaviour, physiology and morphology as adults. In some cases, these changes may increase offspring fitness but, in others, they can elevate parental fitness at a cost to the fitness of their offspring. We show that in Kalahari meerkats ( Suricata suricatta ), the circulating glucocorticoid (GC) hormones of pregnant females affect the growth and cooperative behaviour of their offspring. We performed a 3-year experiment in wild meerkats to test the hypothesis that GC-mediated maternal effects reduce the potential for offspring to reproduce directly and therefore cause them to exhibit more cooperative behaviour. Daughters (but not sons) born to mothers treated with cortisol during pregnancy grew more slowly early in life and exhibited significantly more of two types of cooperative behaviour (pup rearing and feeding) once they were adults compared to offspring from control mothers. They also had lower measures of GCs as they aged, which could explain the observed increases in cooperative behaviour. Because early life growth is a crucial determinant of fitness in female meerkats, our results indicate that GC-mediated maternal effects may reduce the fitness of offspring, but may elevate parental fitness as a consequence of increasing the cooperative behaviour of their daughters. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Developing differences: early-life effects and evolutionary medicine’.

Consistent individual differences in cooperative behaviour in meerkats (Suricata suricatta)

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (8) ◽  
pp. 1597-1604 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. ENGLISH ◽  
S. NAKAGAWA ◽  
T. H. CLUTTON-BROCK
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
Suricata Suricatta

Maternal effects influence phenotypes and survival during early life stages in an aquatic turtle

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy S. Mitchell ◽  
Jessica A. Maciel ◽  
Fredric J. Janzen
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Effects ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Life Stages ◽  
Early Life Stages

No trans-generational maternal effects of early-life corticosterone exposure on neophobia and antipredator behaviour in the house sparrow

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Marasco ◽  
Sophie M. Dupont ◽  
Jacquelyn K. Grace ◽  
Frédéric Angelier
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Effects ◽  
Early Life ◽  
House Sparrow ◽  
Antipredator Behaviour

scholarly journals Natural variation in yolk fatty acids, but not androgens, predicts offspring fitness in a wild bird

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Mentesana ◽  
Martin N. Andersson ◽  
Stefania Casagrande ◽  
Wolfgang Goymann ◽  
Caroline Isaksson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fatty Acids ◽  
Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids ◽  
Maternal Effects ◽  
Natural Variation ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Natural Populations ◽  
Egg Laying ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Free Living ◽  
Offspring Fitness

Abstract Background In egg-laying animals, mothers can influence the developmental environment and thus the phenotype of their offspring by secreting various substances into the egg yolk. In birds, recent studies have demonstrated that different yolk substances can interactively affect offspring phenotype, but the implications of such effects for offspring fitness and phenotype in natural populations have remained unclear. We measured natural variation in the content of 31 yolk components known to shape offspring phenotypes including steroid hormones, antioxidants and fatty acids in eggs of free-living great tits (Parus major) during two breeding seasons. We tested for relationships between yolk component groupings and offspring fitness and phenotypes. Results Variation in hatchling and fledgling numbers was primarily explained by yolk fatty acids (including saturated, mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids) - but not by androgen hormones and carotenoids, components previously considered to be major determinants of offspring phenotype. Fatty acids were also better predictors of variation in nestling oxidative status and size than androgens and carotenoids. Conclusions Our results suggest that fatty acids are important yolk substances that contribute to shaping offspring fitness and phenotype in free-living populations. Since polyunsaturated fatty acids cannot be produced de novo by the mother, but have to be obtained from the diet, these findings highlight potential mechanisms (e.g., weather, habitat quality, foraging ability) through which environmental variation may shape maternal effects and consequences for offspring. Our study represents an important first step towards unraveling interactive effects of multiple yolk substances on offspring fitness and phenotypes in free-living populations. It provides the basis for future experiments that will establish the pathways by which yolk components, singly and/or interactively, mediate maternal effects in natural populations.

scholarly journals Social environment influences the relationship between genotype and gene expression in wild baboons

2013 ◽  
Vol 368 (1618) ◽  
pp. 20120345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel E. Runcie ◽  
Ralph T. Wiedmann ◽  
Elizabeth A. Archie ◽  
Jeanne Altmann ◽  
Gregory A. Wray ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Dominance Rank ◽  
Social Stressors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wild Baboons

Variation in the social environment can have profound effects on survival and reproduction in wild social mammals. However, we know little about the degree to which these effects are influenced by genetic differences among individuals, and conversely, the degree to which social environmental variation mediates genetic reaction norms. To better understand these relationships, we investigated the potential for dominance rank, social connectedness and group size to modify the effects of genetic variation on gene expression in the wild baboons of the Amboseli basin. We found evidence for a number of gene–environment interactions (GEIs) associated with variation in the social environment, encompassing social environments experienced in adulthood as well as persistent effects of early life social environment. Social connectedness, maternal dominance rank and group size all interacted with genotype to influence gene expression in at least one sex, and either in early life or in adulthood. These results suggest that social and behavioural variation, akin to other factors such as age and sex, can impact the genotype–phenotype relationship. We conclude that GEIs mediated by the social environment are important in the evolution and maintenance of individual differences in wild social mammals, including individual differences in responses to social stressors.

scholarly journals The influence of stress hormones and aggression on cooperative behaviour in subordinate meerkats

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1863) ◽  
pp. 20171248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Dantzer ◽  
Ines Braga Goncalves ◽  
Helen C. Spence-Jones ◽  
Nigel C. Bennett ◽  
Michael Heistermann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Glucocorticoid Receptor ◽  
Receptor Antagonist ◽  
Treatment Effects ◽  
Stress Hormones ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
Food Provisioning ◽  
Stress Hormone ◽  
Suricata Suricatta

In cooperative breeders, aggression from dominant breeders directed at subordinates may raise subordinate stress hormone (glucocorticoid) concentrations. This may benefit dominants by suppressing subordinate reproduction but it is uncertain whether aggression from dominants can elevate subordinate cooperative behaviour, or how resulting changes in subordinate glucocorticoid concentrations affect their cooperative behaviour. We show here that the effects of manipulating glucocorticoid concentrations in wild meerkats ( Suricata suricatta ) on cooperative behaviour varied between cooperative activities as well as between the sexes. Subordinates of both sexes treated with a glucocorticoid receptor antagonist (mifepristone) exhibited significantly more pup protection behaviour (babysitting) compared to those treated with glucocorticoids (cortisol) or controls. Females treated with mifepristone had a higher probability of exhibiting pup food provisioning (pup-feeding) compared to those treated with cortisol. In males, there were no treatment effects on the probability of pup-feeding, but those treated with cortisol gave a higher proportion of the food they found to pups than those treated with mifepristone. Using 19 years of behavioural data, we also show that dominant females did not increase the frequency with which they directed aggression at subordinates at times when the need for assistance was highest. Our results suggest that it is unlikely that dominant females manipulate the cooperative behaviour of subordinates through the effects of aggression on their glucocorticoid levels and that the function of aggression directed at subordinates is probably to reduce the probability they will breed.

Vir Dei: secular sanctity in the early tenth century

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Derek Baker
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Life Crisis ◽  
Literary Convention ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Middle Ages

As recent anniversary studies have emphasised, the vir Dei, the man of God, has been a christian type since the time of St Antony, and whatever pre-christian elements were embodied in the Athanasian picture the Vita Antonii possessed a christian coherence and completeness which made of it the proto-type for a whole range of literature in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. In hagiography the Antonine sequence of early life, crisis and conversion, probation and temptation, privation and renunciation, miraculous power, knowledge and authority, is, in its essentials, repeated ad nauseam. Martin, Guthlac, Odo, Dunstan, Bernard are all, whatever their individual differences, forced into the same procrustean biographical mould: each is clearly qualified, and named, as vir Dei, and each exemplifies the same - and at times the pre-eminent – christian vocation. Yet if the insight provided by such literature into the mind of medieval man is instructive about his society and social organisation, and illuminating about his ideal aspirations, the literary convention itself is always limiting, and frequently misleading. As Professor Momigliano has said, ‘biography was never quite a part of historiography’, and one might add that hagiography is not quite biography.

scholarly journals Sex differences in helping effort reveal the effect of future reproduction on cooperative behaviour in birds

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1885) ◽  
pp. 20181164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip A. Downing ◽  
Ashleigh S. Griffin ◽  
Charlie K. Cornwallis
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Reproductive Success ◽  
Kin Selection ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
The Future ◽  
Helping Behaviour ◽  
Future Reproduction ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Family Groups

The evolution of helping behaviour in species that breed cooperatively in family groups is typically attributed to kin selection alone. However, in many species, helpers go on to inherit breeding positions in their natal groups, but the extent to which this contributes to selection for helping is unclear as the future reproductive success of helpers is often unknown. To quantify the role of future reproduction in the evolution of helping, we compared the helping effort of female and male retained offspring across cooperative birds. The kin selected benefits of helping are equivalent between female and male helpers—they are equally related to the younger siblings they help raise—but the future reproductive benefits of helping differ because of sex differences in the likelihood of breeding in the natal group. We found that the sex which is more likely to breed in its natal group invests more in helping, suggesting that in addition to kin selection, helping in family groups is shaped by future reproduction.

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