Testing reproductive skew models in a communally breeding bird, the pukeko, Porphyrio porphyrio

Abstract

Recent attempts to explain variation among social species in the degree to which reproduction is shared among group members are focused on what are known as reproductive skew models. Reproduction within social groups can vary from an even distribution among all adults (i.e. low skew) to complete monopolization by a dominant individual (high skew). Three critical predictions derived from these models have remained largely untested: (1) reduced chances of independent breeding due to strong ecological constraints results in high reproductive skew; (2) the lower the genetic relatedness within social groups the lower the skew; and, counter-intuitively, (3) dominance-related aggression will be more prevalent in social groups composed of close kin where reproductive skew is predicted to be high. Here I test these predictions by comparing two populations of the communally breeding pukeko (Porphyrio porphyrio), which show extremes in social organization, namely social groups consisting of close kin versus groups made up of unrelated breeders. I report evidence from both cobreeding males and females in support of the above predictions. The results also indicate that low reproductive skew among unrelated group members may be prevalent in social species that possess weapons that can inflict serious injury in situations where reproductive competition may escalate to fighting. The consistency between these results and those from studies of social insects suggests that reproductive skew models may represent a unifying framework for understanding the factors shaping complex animal societies.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (177.4 KB).