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Helpful Female Subordinate Cichlids Are More Likely to Reproduce
BACKGROUND: In many cooperatively breeding vertebrates, subordinates assist a dominant pair to raise the dominants' offspring. Previously, it has been suggested that subordinates may help in payment for continued residency on the territory (the ‘pay-to-stay hypothesis’), but payment might also...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2009
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19421320 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005458 |
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author | Heg, Dik Jutzeler, Eva Mitchell, Jeremy S. Hamilton, Ian M. |
author_facet | Heg, Dik Jutzeler, Eva Mitchell, Jeremy S. Hamilton, Ian M. |
author_sort | Heg, Dik |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: In many cooperatively breeding vertebrates, subordinates assist a dominant pair to raise the dominants' offspring. Previously, it has been suggested that subordinates may help in payment for continued residency on the territory (the ‘pay-to-stay hypothesis’), but payment might also be reciprocated or might allow subordinates access to reproductive opportunities. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We measured dominant and subordinate female alloparental brood care and reproductive success in four separate experiments and show that unrelated female dominant and subordinate cichlid fish care for each other's broods (alloparental brood care), but that there is no evidence for reciprocal ‘altruism’ (no correlation between alloparental care received and given). Instead, subordinate females appear to pay with alloparental care for own direct reproduction. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results suggest subordinate females pay with alloparental care to ensure access to the breeding substrate and thereby increase their opportunities to lay their own clutches. Subordinates' eggs are laid, on average, five days after the dominant female has produced her first brood. We suggest that immediate reproductive benefits need to be considered in tests of the pay-to-stay hypothesis. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2673683 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2009 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-26736832009-05-06 Helpful Female Subordinate Cichlids Are More Likely to Reproduce Heg, Dik Jutzeler, Eva Mitchell, Jeremy S. Hamilton, Ian M. PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: In many cooperatively breeding vertebrates, subordinates assist a dominant pair to raise the dominants' offspring. Previously, it has been suggested that subordinates may help in payment for continued residency on the territory (the ‘pay-to-stay hypothesis’), but payment might also be reciprocated or might allow subordinates access to reproductive opportunities. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We measured dominant and subordinate female alloparental brood care and reproductive success in four separate experiments and show that unrelated female dominant and subordinate cichlid fish care for each other's broods (alloparental brood care), but that there is no evidence for reciprocal ‘altruism’ (no correlation between alloparental care received and given). Instead, subordinate females appear to pay with alloparental care for own direct reproduction. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results suggest subordinate females pay with alloparental care to ensure access to the breeding substrate and thereby increase their opportunities to lay their own clutches. Subordinates' eggs are laid, on average, five days after the dominant female has produced her first brood. We suggest that immediate reproductive benefits need to be considered in tests of the pay-to-stay hypothesis. Public Library of Science 2009-05-06 /pmc/articles/PMC2673683/ /pubmed/19421320 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005458 Text en Heg et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Heg, Dik Jutzeler, Eva Mitchell, Jeremy S. Hamilton, Ian M. Helpful Female Subordinate Cichlids Are More Likely to Reproduce |
title | Helpful Female Subordinate Cichlids Are More Likely to Reproduce |
title_full | Helpful Female Subordinate Cichlids Are More Likely to Reproduce |
title_fullStr | Helpful Female Subordinate Cichlids Are More Likely to Reproduce |
title_full_unstemmed | Helpful Female Subordinate Cichlids Are More Likely to Reproduce |
title_short | Helpful Female Subordinate Cichlids Are More Likely to Reproduce |
title_sort | helpful female subordinate cichlids are more likely to reproduce |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19421320 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005458 |
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