Developmental plasticity and social specialization in cooperative societies

English, Sinéad; Browning, Lucy E.; Raihani, Nichola

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.05.006

Cited by 27 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…breeding vertebrates do not pursue divergent developmental trajectories, predisposing them for early dispersal or extended philopatry, but respond flexibly to opportunities of dispersal or natal territory inheritance to achieve a dominant position, which secures them the highest lifetime reproductive success (16).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Divergence of developmental trajectories is triggered interactively by early social and ecological experience in a cooperative breeder

Fischer

Böhn

Oberhummer

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

102

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Cooperative breeders feature the highest level of social complexity among vertebrates. Environmental constraints foster the evolution of this form of social organization, selecting for both well-developed social and ecological competences. Cooperative breeders pursue one of two alternative social trajectories: delaying reproduction to care for the offspring of dominant breeders or dispersing early to breed independently. It is yet unclear which ecological and social triggers determine the choice between these alternatives and whether diverging developmental trajectories exist in cooperative vertebrates predisposing them to dispersal or philopatry. Here we experimentally reared juveniles of cooperatively breeding cichlid fish by varying the social environment and simulated predation threat in a two-by-two factorial long-term experiment. First, we show that individuals develop specialized behavioral competences, originating already in the early postnatal phase. Second, these specializations predisposed individuals to pursue different developmental trajectories and either to disperse early or to extend philopatry in adulthood. Thus, our results contrast with the proposition that social specializations in early ontogeny should be restricted to eusocial species. Importantly, social and ecological triggers were both required for the generation of divergent life histories. Our results thus confirm recent predictions from theoretical models that organisms should combine relevant information from different environmental cues to develop integrated phenotypes.

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Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Divergence of developmental trajectories is triggered interactively by early social and ecological experience in a cooperative breeder

Fischer

Böhn

Oberhummer

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

102

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Previous models of the evolution of early life effects have focused chiefly on adaptation to fluctuations in the abiotic environment (e.g., [13,15,18,[40][41][42][43]) with surprisingly little attention given to social sensitivity (as previously noted in [3]). A key prediction of existing theory is that environmental conditions need to be sufficiently autocorrelated with later-life environmental conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many taxa, the social environment experienced during early life gives rise to predictable between-individual differences in adult social behaviour [1][2][3][4][5]. For example, in many rodents, individuals who have received limited parental care also provide less parental care themselves to their own offspring [6,7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, macaques exposed to parental abuse are likely to develop similar abusive traits in adulthood [8]. These examples hint at a form of developmental plasticity, in which social cues early in life lead to irreversible developmental switching among different social phenotypes [3,5,9]. A commonly found pattern is that early-life social adversity results in the reduced expression of prosocial behaviour later in life, which in turn results in social adversity in the next generation [7,10,11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While this explanation is intuitive, a key shortcoming of these models is that they have been exclusively formulated with abiotic environments in mind, whereas in the context of social behaviours, the future is shaped by the actions of individuals themselves. Consequently, these models cannot explain why individuals who have experienced social adversity early in life are selectively favoured to go on and subsequently create a socially adverse environment for their own offspring [3,22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Evolution of Early-Life Effects on Social Behaviour – Why Should Social Adversity Carry Over to the Future?

Kuijper

Johnstone

2018

Preprint

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Numerous studies have shown that social adversity in early life can have long-lasting negative consequences for social behaviour in adulthood, consequences that may in turn be propagated to future generations. Given these intergenerational effects, it is puzzling why natural selection might favour such sensitivity to an individual's early social environment. To address this question, we model the evolution of social sensitivity in the development of in helping behaviours, showing that natural selection indeed favours individuals whose tendency to help others is dependent on early-life social experience. We find that natural selection typically favours positive social feedbacks, in which individuals who received more help in early life are also more likely to help others in adulthood, while individuals who received no early-life help develop low tendencies to helping others later in life. This positive social sensitivity is favoured because of an intergenerational relatedness feedback: patches with many helpers tend to be more productive, leading to higher relatedness within the local group, which in turn favours higher levels of help in the next generation.Keywords: predictive adaptive response, developmental plasticity, inclusive fitness, maternal effect, parental effect, intergenerational effect Running title: Early life effects on social behaviour

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