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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Temporal Variability And Cooperative Breeding: Testing The Bet-Hedging Hypothesis In The Acorn Woodpecker, Walter D. Koenig, Eric L. Walters
Temporal Variability And Cooperative Breeding: Testing The Bet-Hedging Hypothesis In The Acorn Woodpecker, Walter D. Koenig, Eric L. Walters
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
Cooperative breeding is generally considered an adaptation to ecological constraints on dispersal and independent breeding, usually due to limited breeding opportunities. Although benefits of cooperative breeding are typically thought of in terms of increased mean reproductive success, it has recently been proposed that this phenomenonmay be a bet-hedging strategy that reduces variance in reproductive success (fecundity variance) inpopulations living inhighly variable environments. We tested this hypothesis using long-term data on the polygynandrous acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus). In general, fecundity variance decreased with increasing sociality, at least when controlling for annual variation in ecological conditions. Nonetheless, decreased fecundity variance …
The Behavioral Causes Of Reproductive Skew In Cooperatively Polygynandrous Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes Formicivorus), Anna C. Brownson
The Behavioral Causes Of Reproductive Skew In Cooperatively Polygynandrous Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes Formicivorus), Anna C. Brownson
Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations
Reproductive skew, the degree to which reproduction is shared among same-sex individuals in a social group, is a pattern affected by ecological conditions, sociality, cooperation, and the inter- and intrasexual behavior of individuals in complex animal societies. Transactional and compromise skew models assume that high skew is the product of dominance hierarchies among cobreeders, yet this has rarely been tested. Both model types fail to incorporate the decisions of more than two individuals, generally overlooking the effect of female behavior on male reproductive success in multi-male groups, and are ineffective at predicting skew in larger groups characterized by more than …