Abstract
Evolutionary explanations of cooperative breeding based on kin selection have predicted that the individual contributions made by different helpers to rearing young should be correlated with their degree of kinship to the litter or brood they are raising. In the cooperative mongoose or meerkat, Suricata suricatta, helpers babysit pups at the natal burrow for the first month of pup life and frequent babysitters suffer substantial weight losses over the period of babysitting. Large differences in contributions exist between helpers, which are correlated with their age, sex and weight but not with their kinship to the young they are raising. Provision of food to some group members raises the contributions of individuals to babysitting. We discuss the implications of these results for evolutionary explanations of cooperative behaviour.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (183.0 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Clutton-Brock T. H., Brotherton P. N., Smith R., McIlrath G. M., Kansky R., Gaynor D., O'Riain M. J., Skinner J. D. Infanticide and expulsion of females in a cooperative mammal. Proc Biol Sci. 1998 Dec 7;265(1412):2291–2295. doi: 10.1098/rspb.1998.0573. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Clutton-Brock T. H., Gaynor D., Kansky R., MacColl A. D., McIlrath G., Chadwick P., Brotherton P. N., O'Riain J. M., Manser M., Skinner J. D. Costs of cooperative behaviour in suricates (Suricata suricatta). Proc Biol Sci. 1998 Feb 7;265(1392):185–190. doi: 10.1098/rspb.1998.0281. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Fitzsimmons N. N. Single paternity of clutches and sperm storage in the promiscuous green turtle (Chelonia mydas). Mol Ecol. 1998 May;7(5):575–584. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.1998.00355.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hamilton W. D. The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II. J Theor Biol. 1964 Jul;7(1):17–52. doi: 10.1016/0022-5193(64)90039-6. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Owens D. D., Owens M. J. Helping behaviour in brown hyenas. 1984 Apr 26-May 2Nature. 308(5962):843–845. doi: 10.1038/308843a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Reeve H. K. Queen activation of lazy workers in colonies of the eusocial naked mole-rat. Nature. 1992 Jul 9;358(6382):147–149. doi: 10.1038/358147a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]