No apparent benefits of allonursing for recipient offspring and mothers in the cooperatively breeding meerkat

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dc.contributor.author MacLeod, Kristy J.
dc.contributor.author McGhee, Katie E.
dc.contributor.author Clutton-Brock, Tim H.
dc.date.accessioned 2015-03-19T05:36:48Z
dc.date.available 2015-03-19T05:36:48Z
dc.date.issued 2015-07
dc.description.abstract 1. Cooperative behaviours by definition are those that provide some benefit to another individual. Allonursing, the nursing of non-descendent young, is often considered a cooperative behavior and is assumed to provide benefits to recipient offspring in terms of growth and survival, and to their mothers, by enabling them to share the lactation load. However, these proposed benefits are not well understood, in part because maternal and litter traits and other ecological and social variables are not independent of one another, making patterns hard to discern using standard univariate analyses.2. Here, we investigate the potential benefits of allonursing in the cooperatively breeding Kalahari meerkat, where socially subordinate females allonurse the young of a dominant pair without having young of their own. 3. We use structural equation modelling to allow us to account for the interdependence of maternal traits, litter traits and environmental factors.4. We find no evidence that allonursing provides benefits to pups or mothers. Pups that received allonursing were not heavier at emergence and did not have a higher survival rate than pups that did not receive allonursing. Mothers whose litters were allonursed were not in better physical condition, did not reconceive faster, and did not reduce their own nursing investment compared to mothers who nursed their litters alone. These patterns were not significantly influenced by whether mothers were in relatively good, or poor, condition. 5. We suggest that allonursing may persist in this species because the costs to allonurses may be low. Alternatively allonursing may confer other, more cryptic, benefits to pups or allonurses, such as immunological or social benefits. en_ZA
dc.description.embargo 2016-07-30 en_ZA
dc.description.librarian hb2015 en_ZA
dc.description.sponsorship KJM was supported by a research grant from the Cambridge Philosophical Society. KEM was supported by a US National Science Foundation grant to Alison Bell and KEM (NSF IOS 1121980). en_ZA
dc.description.uri http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1469-7580 en_ZA
dc.identifier.citation Macleod, KJ, McGhee, KE & Clutton-Brock, TH 2015, 'No apparent benefits of allonursing for recipient offspring and mothers in the cooperatively breeding meerkat', Journal of Animal Ecology, vol. 84, no. 4, pp. 1050-1058. en_ZA
dc.identifier.issn 0021-8782 (print)
dc.identifier.issn 1469-7580 (online)
dc.identifier.other 10.1111/1365-2656.12343
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2263/44050
dc.language.iso en en_ZA
dc.publisher Wiley en_ZA
dc.rights © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology © 2015 British Ecological Society. This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article : No apparent benefits of allonursing for recipient offspring and mothers in the cooperatively breeding meerkat, Journal of Animal Ecology, vol. 84, no. 4, pp. 1050-1058, 2015, doi : 10.1111/1365-2656.12343. The definite version is available at : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.comjournal/10.1111/(ISSN)1469-7580. en_ZA
dc.subject Allonursing en_ZA
dc.subject Cooperation en_ZA
dc.subject Maternal condition en_ZA
dc.subject Structural equation modelling (SEM) en_ZA
dc.subject Suricata suricatta en_ZA
dc.title No apparent benefits of allonursing for recipient offspring and mothers in the cooperatively breeding meerkat en_ZA
dc.type Postprint Article en_ZA


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