NDLI: Family insurance: kin selection and cooperative breeding in a solitary primate (Microcebus murinus)

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Eberle, Manfred Kappeler, Peter M.
Copyright Year	2006
Abstract	Lactation imposes substantial physiological costs on mothers and should therefore not be directed towards foreign offspring. Such allonursing, however, is common in mammal species that share roosts. Hypotheses to explain allonursing among such plural breeders include misdirected parental care, milk evacuation, brood parasitism, reciprocity, and kin selection. The necessary behavioral data, in combination with data on kinship and kin recognition, have rarely been available to distinguish among these explanations, however. In this study, we provide evidence for cooperative nursing and adoption by plural-breeding females in a nocturnal primate, the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus), in which females forage solitarily during the night, but form day-time sleeping groups with one to two other females. We observed 34 resident females in an 8 ha study area in Kirindy Forest, Madagascar, over three consecutive annual breeding seasons and determined genetic relationships among all members of this population. Five sleeping groups of adult females were filmed inside their roosts during one breeding season after females gave birth. The composition of groups changed substantially across years, but they always consisted of close maternal relatives. All females within a group gave birth to one to three infants. They regularly transferred only their own offspring among roosting sites, demonstrating an ability to discriminate between their own and other’s offspring, but they regularly groomed and nursed related offspring other than their own and adopted related dependent young after their mother’s death. Kin selection may therefore be the main selective force behind cooperative breeding among these closely related females with a high mortality risk, providing each of them with family insurance.
Starting Page	582
Ending Page	588
Page Count	7
File Format	PDF
ISSN	03405443
Journal	Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Volume Number	60
Issue Number	4
e-ISSN	14320762
Language	English
Publisher	Springer-Verlag
Publisher Date	2006-06-08
Publisher Place	Berlin, Heidelberg
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Cooperative breeding Cooperation Kin selection Family Primates Microcebus Zoology Behavioural Sciences
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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