Pregnancy reduces concurrent pup care behaviour in meerkats, generating differences between dominant and subordinate females.
Journal
The Journal of animal ecology
ISSN: 1365-2656
Titre abrégé: J Anim Ecol
Pays: England
ID NLM: 0376574
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
07 2023
07 2023
Historique:
received:
15
09
2022
accepted:
19
04
2023
medline:
6
7
2023
pubmed:
6
6
2023
entrez:
6
6
2023
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
In some mammals, and particularly in cooperative breeding ones, successive bouts of reproduction can overlap so that a female is often pregnant while still nurturing dependent young from her previous litter. Such an overlap requires females to divide their energetic budget between two reproductive activities, and pregnancy costs would consequently be expected to reduce investment in concurrent offspring care. However, explicit evidence for such reductions is scarce, and the potential effects they may have on work division in cooperative breeders have not been explored. Using 25 years of data on reproduction and cooperative behaviour in wild Kalahari meerkats, supplemented with field experiments, we investigated whether pregnancy reduces contributions to cooperative pup care behaviours, including babysitting, provisioning and raised guarding. We also explored whether pregnancy, which is more frequent in dominants than subordinates, could account for the reduced contributions of dominants to the cooperative pup care behaviours. We found that pregnancy, particularly at late stages of gestation, reduces contributions to cooperative pup care; that these reductions are eliminated when the food available to pregnant females is experimentally supplemented; and that pregnancy effects accounted for differences between dominants and subordinates in two of the three cooperative behaviours examined (pup provisioning and raised guarding but not babysitting). By linking pregnancy costs with reductions in concurrent pup care, our findings illuminate a trade-off between investment in successive, overlapping bouts of reproduction. They also suggest that some of the differences in cooperative behaviour between dominant and subordinate females in cooperative breeding mammals can be a direct consequence of differences in their breeding frequency.
Identifiants
pubmed: 37277989
doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.13963
doi:
Banques de données
Dryad
['10.5061/dryad.gxd2547rf']
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
1431-1441Subventions
Organisme : European Research Council
ID : 294494
Pays : International
Informations de copyright
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.
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