scholarly journals Naked mole‐rats ( Heterocephalus glaber ) do not specialise in cooperative tasks

Ethology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 127 (10) ◽  
pp. 850-864
Author(s):  
Susanne Siegmann ◽  
Romana Feitsch ◽  
Daniel W. Hart ◽  
Nigel C. Bennett ◽  
Dustin J. Penn ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Siegmann ◽  
Romana Feitsch ◽  
Daniel W Hart ◽  
Nigel C Bennett ◽  
Dustin J Penn ◽  
...  

It has been proposed that naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) societies resemble those of eusocial insects by showing a division of labour among non-breeding individuals. Earlier studies suggested that non-breeders belong to distinct castes that specialise permanently or temporarily on specific cooperative tasks. In contrast, recent research on naked mole-rats has shown that behavioural phenotypes are continuously distributed across non-breeders and that mole-rats exhibit considerable behavioural plasticity suggesting that individuals may not specialise permanently on work tasks. However, it is currently unclear whether individuals specialise temporarily and whether there is a sex bias in cooperative behaviour among non-breeders. Here we show that non-breeding individuals vary in overall cooperative investment, but do not specialise on specific work tasks. Within individuals, investment into specific cooperative tasks such as nest building, food carrying and burrowing are positively correlated, and there is no evidence that individuals show trade-offs between these cooperative behaviours. Non-breeding males and females do not differ in their investment in cooperative behaviours and show broadly similar age and body mass related differences in cooperative behaviours. Our results suggest that non-breeding naked mole-rats vary in their overall contribution to cooperative behaviours and that some of this variation may be explained by differences in age and body mass. Our data provide no evidence for temporary specialisation, as found among some eusocial insects, and suggests that the behavioural organisation of naked mole-rats resembles that of other cooperatively breeding vertebrates more than that of eusocial insect species.



2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (37) ◽  
pp. 10382-10387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Zöttl ◽  
Philippe Vullioud ◽  
Rute Mendonça ◽  
Miquel Torrents Ticó ◽  
David Gaynor ◽  
...  

In many cooperative breeders, the contributions of helpers to cooperative activities change with age, resulting in age-related polyethisms. In contrast, some studies of social mole rats (including naked mole rats, Heterocephalus glaber, and Damaraland mole rats, Fukomys damarensis) suggest that individual differences in cooperative behavior are the result of divergent developmental pathways, leading to discrete and permanent functional categories of helpers that resemble the caste systems found in eusocial insects. Here we show that, in Damaraland mole rats, individual contributions to cooperative behavior increase with age and are higher in fast-growing individuals. Individual contributions to different cooperative tasks are intercorrelated and repeatability of cooperative behavior is similar to that found in other cooperatively breeding vertebrates. Our data provide no evidence that nonreproductive individuals show divergent developmental pathways or specialize in particular tasks. Instead of representing a caste system, variation in the behavior of nonreproductive individuals in Damaraland mole rats closely resembles that found in other cooperatively breeding mammals and appears to be a consequence of age-related polyethism.





2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Horst ◽  
Sanet Kotzè ◽  
M. Justin O'Riain ◽  
Nolan Muller ◽  
Liana Maree




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