Social stability and helping in small animal societies

被引:31
作者
Field, Jeremy [1 ]
Cant, Michael A. [2 ]
机构
[1] Univ Sussex, Dept Biol & Environm Sci, Brighton BN1 9QG, E Sussex, England
[2] Univ Exeter, Ctr Ecol & Conservat, Tremough TR10 9EZ, Penryn, England
关键词
social queues; social aggression; helping; group stability; Polistes; reproductive skew; WASP POLISTES-DOMINULUS; REPRODUCTIVE SKEW MODELS; EUSOCIAL HOVER WASPS; PAPER WASP; DOMINANCE HIERARCHY; GENETIC RELATEDNESS; UNRELATED HELPERS; FUTURE FITNESS; QUEENLESS ANT; GROUP-SIZE;
D O I
10.1098/rstb.2009.0110
中图分类号
Q [生物科学];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
In primitively eusocial societies, all individuals can potentially reproduce independently. The key fact that we focus on in this paper is that individuals in such societies instead often queue to inherit breeding positions. Queuing leads to systematic differences in expected future fitness. We first discuss the implications this has for variation in behaviour. For example, because helpers nearer to the front of the queue have more to lose, they should work less hard to rear the dominant's offspring. However, higher rankers may be more aggressive than low rankers, even if they risk injury in the process, if aggression functions to maintain or enhance queue position. Second, we discuss how queuing rules may be enforced through hidden threats that rarely have to be carried out. In fishes, rule breakers face the threat of eviction from the group. In contrast, subordinate paper wasps are not injured or evicted during escalated challenges against the dominant, perhaps because they are more valuable to the dominant. We discuss evidence that paper-wasp dominants avoid escalated conflicts by ceding reproduction to subordinates. Queuing rules appear usually to be enforced by individuals adjacent in the queue rather than by dominants. Further manipulative studies are required to reveal mechanisms underlying queue stability and to elucidate what determines queue position in the first place.
引用
收藏
页码:3181 / 3189
页数:9
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