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Kinship reduces alloparental care in cooperative cichlids where helpers pay-to-stay

Markus Zöttl1, Dik Heg, Noémie Chervet

  • 1Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, CH-3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland. mz338@cam.ac.uk

Nature Communications
|January 10, 2013
PubMed

Alloparental brood care, where individuals help raising the offspring of others, is generally believed to be favoured by high degrees of relatedness between helpers and recipients. Here we show that in cooperatively breeding cichlids, unrelated subordinate females provide more alloparental care than related ones when kinship between dominant and subordinate group members is experimentally manipulated. In addition, unrelated helpers increased alloparental care after we simulated egg cannibalism by helpers, an effect not shown by related helpers. By supporting predictions of pay-to-stay theory, these results suggest that in Neolamprologus pulcher, reciprocal commodity trading is important for the decision of subordinates to invest in care of the dominants' offspring.

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