PSYC 3100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Alloparenting, Eusociality, Hymenoptera
2 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
A species is called social if, during its life cycle, it engages in sustained cooperation that goes beyond parental care and the continued association of mated pairs. Social species: outstanding examples : colonial invertebrates, eusocial insects (hymenoptera), mammals such as lions, elephants, corvids, primates (apes, humans) Costs: competition between individuals for mates, food and other resources. Benefits: groups of individuals can achieve things that individuals cannot. Under natural selection, sociality can only evolve if the benefits outweigh the costs. Division of labor: scanning for predators alternating with feeding: shared foraging: animals can share foraging duty and share information about feeding sites. Foraging groups may be small but if food sources are patchy (pan), larger if they are big patchy: territorial protection: the main sources of danger for many animals are competing groups of con-specifics (chimps, lions). Hunting (3, above) only marginally increases with hunting group size, while the ability to defend against rival groups, and take over rival groups.
