| Social stability and helping in small animal societies. | |
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MedLine Citation:
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PMID: 19805426 Owner: NLM Status: MEDLINE |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
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In primitively eusocial societies, all individuals can potentially reproduce independently. The key fact that we focus on in this paper is that individuals in such societies instead often queue to inherit breeding positions. Queuing leads to systematic differences in expected future fitness. We first discuss the implications this has for variation in behaviour. For example, because helpers nearer to the front of the queue have more to lose, they should work less hard to rear the dominant's offspring. However, higher rankers may be more aggressive than low rankers, even if they risk injury in the process, if aggression functions to maintain or enhance queue position. Second, we discuss how queuing rules may be enforced through hidden threats that rarely have to be carried out. In fishes, rule breakers face the threat of eviction from the group. In contrast, subordinate paper wasps are not injured or evicted during escalated challenges against the dominant, perhaps because they are more valuable to the dominant. We discuss evidence that paper-wasp dominants avoid escalated conflicts by ceding reproduction to subordinates. Queuing rules appear usually to be enforced by individuals adjacent in the queue rather than by dominants. Further manipulative studies are required to reveal mechanisms underlying queue stability and to elucidate what determines queue position in the first place. |
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Authors:
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Jeremy Field; Michael A Cant |
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Publication Detail:
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Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article |
Journal Detail:
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Title: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences Volume: 364 ISSN: 1471-2970 ISO Abbreviation: Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci. Publication Date: 2009 Nov |
Date Detail:
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Created Date: 2009-10-06 Completed Date: 2010-02-11 Revised Date: 2010-11-15 |
Medline Journal Info:
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Nlm Unique ID: 7503623 Medline TA: Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Country: England |
Other Details:
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Languages: eng Pagination: 3181-9 Citation Subset: IM |
Affiliation:
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Department of Biology and Environmental Science, John Maynard Smith Building, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK. j.field@sussex.ac.uk |
Export Citation:
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| MeSH Terms | |
Descriptor/Qualifier:
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Animals Behavior, Animal* Female Reproduction* Social Dominance* Wasps* |
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
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