Costs of cooperative behaviour in suricates (Suricata suricatta)

Abstract

Functional interpretations of helping behaviour suggest that it has evolved because helpers increase their direct or indirect fitness by helping. However, recent critiques have suggested that helping may be an unselected extension of normal parental behaviour, pointing to evidence that all mature individuals commonly respond to begging young (whether they are parents, relatives or non-relatives) as well as to the lack of evidence that cooperative activities have appreciable costs to helpers. Here we provide an example of one form of cooperative behaviour that is seldom performed by parents and has substantial energetic costs to helpers. In the cooperative mongoose, Suricata suricatta, non-breeding adults commonly babysit young pups at the natal burrow for a day at a time, foregoing feeding for 24 hours. Parents rarely contribute to babysitting, and babysitting has substantial energetic costs to helpers. Members of small groups compensate for the reduced number of participants by babysitting more frequently, and neither the proportion of time that babysitters are present nor the survival of litters vary with group size.

Stress and the suppression of subordinate reproduction in cooperatively breeding meerkats

“…However, weight loss on this scale is not particularly unusual for meerkats (e.g., top babysitters lose an average of 25 g over the course of the babysitting period; ref. 21), and, although previous analyses suggest that lighter female meerkats conceive less often (13), a loss of only 28 g cannot readily account for the near-total block on conception experienced by evictees.…”

Who infects whom? Social networks and tuberculosis transmission in wild meerkats

“…Further details of the study site and population are given by Clutton-Brock et al (1998b). Detailed ad libitum observations of up to 300 individually identified meerkats in 14 social groups were made over 24 months from January 2006 to December 2007.…”

“…Interactions between different groups consist principally of temporary intergroup forays by roving males (Young et al 2007) and aggressive encounters between entire groups (Drewe et al 2009c). A population of wild meerkats living in southern Kalahari has been the focus of detailed behavioural ecology studies since 1993 (Clutton-Brock et al 1998b). Tuberculosis owing to infection with a member of the animal-adapted lineage of the M. tuberculosis complex (probably M. bovis) is endemic within this study population (Drewe 2009).…”

Mean fecal glucocorticoid metabolites are associated with vigilance, whereas immediate cortisol levels better reflect acute anti-predator responses in meerkats

“…A total of nine low urgency and 15 medium urgency aerial alarm call playback experiments were conducted in six groups during the afternoons, between 16:00 and 19:00 hours, while the groups were foraging and before they returned to their sleeping burrows. Not all focal individuals were tested with both call types because they were absent from their group on the day of experiments, either due to babysitting (Clutton-Brock et al, 1998a), eviction (CluttonBrock et al, 1998b), or roving (Young et al, 2007); or because preconditions for the playbacks were not met. Each group was tested at least once for each urgency level, but no more than four times.…”