CHDV 23249 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Acorn Woodpecker, Cooperative Breeding
20 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Indirect fitness benefits by providing for related offspring. Provisioning behavior provides helpers with experience that allows them to be more successful when they breed later. Proposes that provisioning behavior by helpers is rewarded by dominant breeder. Young helpers provisioned at low rates, increased with age. Helpers gain indirect fitness benefits by helping feed related but nondescendant offspring. Previous studies have shown that there is no difference between birds that helped and reproduced v. birds that didn"t help and reproduced. Other confounds: better nest placement, more effective incubation. Also difficult this hypothesis: assistance provided by helpers can be regarded as payment for the right to remain in the group some studies have failed to find evidence for this phenomenon. Relationship between provisioning behavior by helpers and their fate as a test of skills and pay-to- stay hypothesis in cooperatively breeding acorn woodpecker cobreeders of the same sex are often siblings or parents and offspring, closely related.
