Future fitness and helping in social queues

Jeremy Field (), Adam Cronin and Catherine Bridge
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Jeremy Field: University College London
Adam Cronin: University College London
Catherine Bridge: University College London

Nature, 2006, vol. 441, issue 7090, 214-217

Abstract: The cost of home help The evolution of sociality, in which some individuals forfeit their own chance of reproduction to help others, is one of the major evolutionary transitions. Through aiding genetic relatives, helpers propagate their own genes indirectly, yet variation in genetic relatedness has failed to explain a universal feature of animal societies: the huge variation in helping effort between individuals. By experimentally manipulating groups of tropical hover wasps in the wild, Field et al. show that some individuals work less hard not because they are less closely related to the individuals they are helping, but because they stand to lose more future reproduction through working. The cost of providing the helping is the key.

Date: 2006
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DOI: 10.1038/nature04560

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