Fitness drivers of division of labor in vertebrates

Although division of labor as a means to increase productivity is a common feature in animal social groups, most previous studies have focused almost exclusively on eusocial insects with extreme task partitioning. Empirical evidence of division of labor in vertebrates is scarce, largely because we lack a theoretical framework to explore the conditions under which division of labor is likely to evolve in cooperatively breeding systems where helpers remain capable of breeding throughout their lifetime. By explicitly considering alternative helping tasks with varying fitness costs, we model how individual decisions on task specialization may influence the emergence of division of labor under both direct and indirect fitness benefits. Surprisingly, we find that direct survival benefits of living in larger groups are the primary force driving the evolution of cooperation to enhance group productivity, and that indirect fitness benefits derived from related group members are only a non-essential facilitator of more stable forms of division of labor in cooperative breeders. In addition, we find that division of labor in vertebrates is favored by harsh environments. Ultimately, our model not only makes key predictions that are consistent with existing empirical data, but also proposes novel avenues for new empirical work in vertebrate and invertebrate systems alike.