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Social stability and helping in small animal societies

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 05:14 authored by Jeremy Field, Michael A. Cant
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.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Proceedings B: Biological Sciences

ISSN

0962-8436

Publisher

Royal Society, The

Issue

1533

Volume

364

Page range

3181-3189

Pages

9.0

Department affiliated with

  • Evolution, Behaviour and Environment Publications

Notes

Issue No 1533

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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