Female–female cooperation in polygynous oystercatchers

Dik Heg () and Rob van Treuren
Additional contact information
Dik Heg: Zoological Laboratory
Rob van Treuren: Zoological Laboratory

Nature, 1998, vol. 391, issue 6668, 687-691

Abstract: Abstract Waders (Charadrii) provide biologists with an astonishing variety of mating systems to study 1. Male and female birds establish breeding units in which behaviour varies from monogamy, polygyny, polyandry, double clutching, lekking and serial monogamy to sex role reversal, and many mixed mating systems exist 1. This diversity is currently explained by the costs and benefits of males and females either cooperating or defecting during breeding attempts 2, 3. The oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) is a typically monogamous species: removal experiments show that both parents are needed to raise chicks to fledgings 4,5,6. However, occasional polygyny has also been reported 7. Here we describe polygynous oystercatcher trios and the reproductive consequences of such polygyny. There is a ‘classical’ form of polygyny (two female territories within the male territory), but oystercatchers also show a remarkable variant, accompanied by female–female cooperation, female–female copulations and joint nesting.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35612 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:391:y:1998:i:6668:d:10.1038_35612

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35612

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().