Fitness consequences of helping

Dickinson, Janis L.; Hatchwell, Ben J.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511606816.004

Cited by 169 publications

(199 citation statements)

References 799 publications

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“…For cooperatively breeding vertebrates, and to a lesser extent for social Hymenoptera (especially for wasps; see [64]), it has been proposed that cooperative breeding is the result of a two-step process [13]. In the first step, constraints (often ecological) select against offspring dispersal and result in family living.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brood care and social evolution in termites

et al. 2012

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Cooperative brood care is assumed to be the common driving factor leading to sociality. While this seems to be true for social Hymenoptera and many cooperatively breeding vertebrates, the importance of brood care for the evolution of eusociality in termites is unclear. A first step in elucidating this problem is an assessment of the ancestral condition in termites. We investigated this by determining the overall level of brood care behaviour across four termite species that cover the phylogenetic diversity of the lower termites. Brood care was low in the three species (all from different families) that had an ancestral wood-dwelling lifestyle of living in a single piece of wood that serves as food and shelter. In the fourth species, a lower termite that evolved outside foraging, brood care was more common. Together with data for higher termites, this suggests that brood care in termites only becomes important when switching from a wood-dwelling to a foraging lifestyle. These results imply that early social evolution in termites was driven by benefits of increased defence, while eusociality in Hymenoptera and cooperative breeding in birds and mammals are primarily based on brood care.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brood care and social evolution in termites

et al. 2012

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“…Costs of competition could explain the discrepancy between our predictions and results, although there are reasons to doubt this interpretation. First, in most systems the benefits of help appear to compensate for any costs because helped nests are usually provisioned more frequently (Hatchwell 1999) and are generally more productive (Dickinson and Hatchwell 2004;Koenig and Dickinson 2016). Furthermore, if competition provided the main constraint to adaptively biasing the sex ratio, we would expect biases toward the helping sex to be especially pro- …”

Section: No Overall Bias Toward Producing the More Helpful Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Allocation Patterns across Cooperatively Breeding Birds Do Not Support Predictions of the Repayment Hypothesis

Khwaja

Hatchwell

Freckleton

et al. 2017

The American Naturalist

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Online enhancements: appendix. Dryad data: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9bk88. abstract:The repayment hypothesis predicts that reproductive females in cooperative breeding systems overproduce the helping sex. Thanks to well-documented examples of this predicted sex ratio bias, repayment has been considered an important driver of variation in sex allocation patterns. Here we test this hypothesis using data on population brood sex ratios and facultative sex allocation from 28 cooperatively breeding bird species. We find that biased sex ratios of helpers do not correlate with production biases in brood sex ratios, contrary to predictions. We also test whether females facultatively produce the helping sex in response to a deficiency of help (i.e., when they have fewer or no helpers). Although this is observed in a few species, it is not a significant trend overall, with a mean effect size close to zero. We conclude that, surprisingly, repayment does not appear to be a widespread influence on sex ratios in cooperatively breeding birds. We discuss possible explanations for our results and encourage further examination of the repayment model.

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“…canids, viverrids, humans). Although helping in provisioning the young has received the majority of interest, helpers can also care by 'nest' building, tending of eggs or young, allo-suckling, as well as carrying, huddling and defending (Cockburn, 1998;Dickinson and Hatchwell, 2004;Russell, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kin selection remained the main theoretical explanation for cooperative breeding for a long time (but see Gaston, 1978;Brown, 1987) since, in addition to the compelling logic of kin selection theory, empirical studies revealed that most helpers are related to the breeders whom they assist (Emlen, 1997;Dickinson and Hatchwell, 2004). Because kin selection was supposed to select against 'cheating', empiricists turned away from questions concerning the evolutionary stability of cooperative behaviour (how and why 'cheats' that refrain from help might be 'punished'), and focussed instead on the observable consequences of helping behaviour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Only in recent years scientists have started to question whether kin selection alone is sufficient to explain cooperative behaviour in cooperative breeding, in particular among vertebrates (Cockburn, 1998;Heinsohn and Legge, 1999;Clutton-Brock, 2002;Ridley and Sutherland, 2002;West et al, 2002b). For instance, it has been argued that indirect fitness benefits due to helping are rarely high enough to compensate for not breeding independently (Dickinson and Hatchwell, 2004), and competition between relatives may counterbalance and even outweigh kin benefits (West et al, 2002b). Also, it is now apparent that helpers in cooperative breeding systems are commonly less related to the breeders than has been generally assumed (Cockburn, 1998;Clutton-Brock, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrating cooperative breeding into theoretical concepts of cooperation

Bergmüller

Johnstone

Russell

et al. 2007

Behavioural Processes

210

232

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In cooperative breeding systems, some individuals help to raise offspring that are not their own. While early explanations for such altruistic behaviour were predominantly based on kin selection, recent evidence suggests that direct benefits may be important in the maintenance of cooperation. To date, however, discussions of cooperative breeding have made little reference to more general theories of cooperation between unrelated individuals (while these theories rarely address cooperative breeding). Here, we attempt to integrate the two fields. We identify four key questions that can be used to categorise different mechanisms for the maintenance of cooperative behaviour: (1) whether or not individuals invest in others; (2) whether or not this initial investment elicits a return investment by the beneficiary; (3) whether the interaction is direct, i.e. between two partners, or indirect (involving third parties) and (4) whether only actions that increase the fitness of the partner or also fitness reducing actions (punishment) are involved in the interaction. Asking these questions with regards to concepts in the literature on cooperative breeding, we found that (a) it is often straightforward to relate these concepts to general mechanisms of cooperation, but that (b) a single term (such as 'pay-to-stay', 'group augmentation' or 'prestige') may sometimes subsume two or more distinct mechanisms, and that (c) at least some mechanisms that are thought to be important in cooperative breeding systems have remained largely unexplored in the theoretical literature on the evolution of cooperation. Future theoretical models should incorporate asymmetries in power and pay off structure caused for instance by dominance hierarchies or partner choice, and the use of N-player games. The key challenges for both theoreticians and empiricists will be to integrate the hitherto disparate fields and to disentangle the parallel effects of kin and non-kin based mechanisms of cooperation.

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Fitness consequences of helping

Cited by 169 publications

References 799 publications

Brood care and social evolution in termites

Brood care and social evolution in termites

Sex Allocation Patterns across Cooperatively Breeding Birds Do Not Support Predictions of the Repayment Hypothesis

Integrating cooperative breeding into theoretical concepts of cooperation

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