Search results for "Sibling cooperation"
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Data from: Growing up with feces: benefits of allo-coprophagy in families of the European earwig
2016
An important issue in the evolution of group living is the risk of pathogen and predator exposure entailed by the inherent accumulation of feces within a nesting site. While many group living species limit this risk by cleaning the nest, others do not, raising questions about the benefits of maintaining feces in the nest and their importance in social evolution. Here, we investigated whether one of these benefits could be mediated by coprophagy in families of the European earwig, Forficula auricularia. In this insect species, mothers and mobile juveniles (nymphs) line their nests with feces and consume them. In a first experiment, we tested whether access to feces produced by either nymphs …
Data from: Sibling cooperation in earwig families provides insights into the early evolution of social life
2013
The evolutionary transition from solitary to social life is driven by direct and indirect fitness benefits of social interactions. Understanding the conditions promoting the early evolution of social life therefore requires identification of these benefits in nonderived social systems, such as animal families where offspring are mobile and able to disperse and will survive independently. Family life is well known to provide benefits to offspring through parental care, but research on sibling interactions generally focused on fitness costs to offspring due to competitive behaviors. Here we show experimentally that sibling interactions also reflect cooperative behaviors in the form of food sh…