Life history stage explains behavior in a social network before and during the early breeding season in a cooperatively breeding bird

Abstract

In species with stage-structured populations selection pressures may vary between different life history stages and result in stage-specific behaviors. We use life history stage to explain variation in the pre and early breeding season social behavior of a cooperatively breeding bird, the Florida scrub-jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens) using social network analysis. Life history stage explains much of the variation we observed in social network position. These differences are consistent with nearly 50 years of natural history observations and generally conform to a priori predictions about how individuals in different stages should behave to maximize their individual fitness. Where the results from the social network analysis differ from the a priori predictions suggest that social interactions between members of different groups are more important for breeders than previously thought. Our results emphasize the importance of accounting for life history stage in studies of individual social behavior.

Physiological costs of prospecting in a resident cooperative breeder, the Florida scrub-jay

“…We collected prospecting data through "aggregation sampling" in which we recorded identities of all Florida scrub-jays seen at previously defined sampling points (details and validation in Tringali et al 2020). To ensure maximum coverage of the study tract, sampling points were nonrandomly stratified given past year's territory boundaries and placed at least 200 m apart (Fig.…”