Joint care can outweigh costs of nonkin competition in communal breeders

Kat Bebbington, Eleanor A Fairfield, Lewis G Spurgin, Sjouke A Kingma, Hannah Dugdale, Jan Komdeur, David S Richardson and Anna LindholmHandling Editor

Behavioral Ecology, 2018, vol. 29, issue 1, 169-178

Abstract: Parents who raise their nestling in a communal nest alongside the nestling of other parents can reduce costly competition between offspring by providing more food. In the Seychelles warbler, we show that nestlings raised with a sibling have lower mass and survival than those raised alone, whereas nestlings raised with a nonsibling do not suffer these costs. Our results suggest that increased food provisioning can reduce competition among nonsiblings and facilitate the evolution of joint-nesting.

Keywords: communal breeding; competition; cooperative breeding; offspring rivalry; relatedness; Seychelles warbler (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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