Group-size-dependent punishment of idle subordinates in a cooperative breeder where helpers pay to stay

Fischer, Stefan; Zöttl, Markus; Groenewoud, Frank; Taborsky, Barbara

doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.0184

Cited by 90 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 73 publications

(154 reference statements)

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“…First, within-group conflict over rank apparently increases with group size. Group members indeed frequently exchange aggressive behaviours among each other [47,48], and a field experiment showed that lazy subordinates receive significantly more aggression from their peers in larger than in smaller groups [39]. Second, access to shelters may be more limited in larger groups; Field experiments revealed that a reduction of available shelters caused group sizes to shrink [34].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A crucial component of this pattern is the pay-to-stay mechanism [50,51], by which subordinates trade help for access to shelters and protection provided by dominants [7,52]. An increased cost of membership in larger groups may thus explain the absence of positive fitness effects of large group size [39].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Group sizes were determined by including all N. pulcher tolerated in the respective territory. As juvenile fish below 1.5 cm standard length (SL) [39] typically do not participate in territory defence or maintenance [40], we calculated group size as the number of all fish larger than 1.5 cm (i.e. both dominant breeders and all subordinates above 1.5 cm SL).…”

Section: Materials and Methods (A) Study Colony And General Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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First- and second-order sociality determine survival and reproduction in cooperative cichlids

Jungwirth¹,

Taborsky²

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Cooperative breeders serve as a model to study the evolution of cooperation, where costs and benefits of helping are typically scrutinized at the level of group membership. However, cooperation is often observed in multi-level social organizations involving interactions among individuals at various levels. Here, we argue that a full understanding of the adaptive value of cooperation and the evolution of complex social organization requires identifying the effect of different levels of social organization on direct and indirect fitness components. Our long-term field data show that in the cooperatively breeding, colonial cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher, both large group size and high colony density significantly raised group persistence. Neither group size nor density affected survival at the individual level, but they had interactive effects on reproductive output; large group size raised productivity when local population density was low, whereas in contrast, small groups were more productive at high densities. Fitness estimates of individually marked fish revealed indirect fitness benefits associated with staying in large groups. Inclusive fitness, however, was not significantly affected by group size, because the direct fitness component was not increased in larger groups. Together, our findings highlight that the reproductive output of groups may be affected in opposite directions by different levels of sociality, and that complex forms of sociality and costly cooperation may evolve in the absence of large indirect fitness benefits and the influence of kin selection.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Materials and Methods (A) Study Colony And General Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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First- and second-order sociality determine survival and reproduction in cooperative cichlids

Jungwirth¹,

Taborsky²

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…Empirical support for the ubiquity of punishment comes from manipulative studies in which subordinates are experimentally prevented from helping. In cichlids and fairy-wrens, dominant individuals were observed to harass apparent defectors when they were experimentally prevented from helping [59,60]; and in naked mole-rats and paper wasps, subordinates became 'lazier' when dominant females were experimentally prevented from punishing rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org Phil. Trans.…”

Section: Empirical Evidence For Cheating and Punishment In Cooperativmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…B 371: 20150090 models support the hypothesis that generalized reciprocity can create evolutionarily stable levels of cooperation in a Prisoner's Dilemma situation by the simple decision rule of 'help anyone if helped by someone', and that following these rules need not be cognitively demanding [105,106]. Although empirical evidence for reciprocal cooperation in natural, non-captive settings still lags behind theory, recent studies on alloparental care have convincingly interpreted helping behaviour by non-relatives as a type of commodity trading-essentially, that helpers 'pay to stay' in the social group by providing cooperative services [57,59].…”

Section: (B) Reproduction By Subordinatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cheating and punishment in cooperative animal societies

Riehl

Frederickson

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Cheaters—genotypes that gain a selective advantage by taking the benefits of the social contributions of others while avoiding the costs of cooperating—are thought to pose a major threat to the evolutionary stability of cooperative societies. In order for cheaters to undermine cooperation, cheating must be an adaptive strategy: cheaters must have higher fitness than cooperators, and their behaviour must reduce the fitness of their cooperative partners. It is frequently suggested that cheating is not adaptive because cooperators have evolved mechanisms to punish these behaviours, thereby reducing the fitness of selfish individuals. However, a simpler hypothesis is that such societies arise precisely because cooperative strategies have been favoured over selfish ones—hence, behaviours that have been interpreted as ‘cheating’ may not actually result in increased fitness, even when they go unpunished. Here, we review the empirical evidence for cheating behaviours in animal societies, including cooperatively breeding vertebrates and social insects, and we ask whether such behaviours are primarily limited by punishment. Our review suggests that both cheating and punishment are probably rarer than often supposed. Uncooperative individuals typically have lower, not higher, fitness than cooperators; and when evidence suggests that cheating may be adaptive, it is often limited by frequency-dependent selection rather than by punishment. When apparently punitive behaviours do occur, it remains an open question whether they evolved in order to limit cheating, or whether they arose before the evolution of cooperation.

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Resource heterogeneity and the evolution of public goods cooperation

et al. 2020

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Heterogeneity in resources is a ubiquitous feature of natural landscapes affecting many aspects of biology. However, the effect of environmental heterogeneity on the evolution of cooperation has been less well studied. Here, using a mixture of theory and experiments measuring siderophore production by the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a model for public goods based cooperation, we explore the effect of heterogeneity in resource availability. We show that cooperation in metapopulations that were spatially heterogeneous in terms of resources can be maintained at a higher level than in homogeneous metapopulations of the same average resource value. The results can be explained by a positive covariance between fitness of cooperators, population size, and local resource availability, which allowed cooperators to have a disproportionate advantage within the heterogeneous metapopulations. These results suggest that natural environmental variation may help to maintain cooperation. K E Y W O R D S :Cooperation, evolution, microorganisms, models, resource heterogeneity, siderophores.

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Group-size-dependent punishment of idle subordinates in a cooperative breeder where helpers pay to stay

Cited by 90 publications

References 73 publications

First- and second-order sociality determine survival and reproduction in cooperative cichlids

First- and second-order sociality determine survival and reproduction in cooperative cichlids

Cheating and punishment in cooperative animal societies

Resource heterogeneity and the evolution of public goods cooperation

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