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12 - Adaptations and constraints in the evolution of delayed dispersal: implications for cooperation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Jan Komdeur  and
Jan Ekman
Edited by
Tamás Székely ,
Allen J. Moore  and
Jan Komdeur
Jan Komdeur
Affiliation:
University of Groningen, Netherlands
Jan Ekman
Affiliation:
Uppsala University, Sweden
Tamás Székely
Affiliation:
University of Bath
Allen J. Moore
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Jan Komdeur
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
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Summary

Overview

Cooperation is a ubiquitous feature of life. While many instances of cooperation are explicable as the selfish motives of individuals, other forms of cooperation, such as cooperative breeding in which individuals live and breed in mixed-sex groups of three or more adults and share in providing care at a single breeding attempt, are difficult to explain. Given that the majority of cooperative breeders exhibit delayed dispersal, it would appear that delayed dispersal plays a role in the evolution of cooperative breeding. However, there are several species that, despite the absence of cooperative breeding, live in family units. Thus it is important to understand the specific fitness consequences of delayed dispersal independently of the confounding fitness consequences of helping behaviour.

In this chapter we focus on how delayed dispersal has evolved or can be maintained in the absence of cooperative breeding. We do this by exploring the proximate and ultimate factors involved in the evolution of delayed dispersal in species which exhibit delayed dispersal but do not cooperate by helping to raise non-descendant relatives. We show that the benefits of delaying dispersal and being philopatric to maintain a family association can come either as direct fitness gained through enhanced survival in family groups (e.g. better predator defence or food access) and/or enhanced future reproduction. Survival benefits from cooperation among group-living kin are likely to be a more general candidate of a fitness component selecting for family cohesion than the inclusive fitness gains from alloparental care.

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Social Behaviour
Genes, Ecology and Evolution
 , pp. 306 - 327
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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