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Uncertainty drives the evolution of 'cooperative breeding' in birds
08-16-2007 · EurekAlert!Rather than striking out to start a family of their own, members of some bird species will stick around longer to help a relative raise their young. Now, researchers report evidence that in African starlings such altruistic tendencies are most common among species that live in savannas, where the rainfall in any given year is virtually impossible to predict.
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Keywords: uncertainty, drives, evolution, cooperative, breeding, birds, drive, bird
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- Uncertainty of rainfall breeds cooperation in birds, study finds
08-16-2007 · EurekAlert!
For the first time, Cornell researchers have linked a specific aspect of the environment to the evolution of cooperative breeding in numerous bird species: unpredictable rainfall. Their findings on African starlings appear in the Aug. 21 issue of Current Biology.
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- Savanna habitat drives birds, and perhaps others, to cooperative breeding
08-16-2007 · EurekAlert!
Birds of a feather flock together, but for African starlings, this is true primarily in savannas, where cooperation improves survival in the unpredictable habitat, according to UC-Berkeley and Cornell researchers. Cooperative breeding, where helpers forego breeding to gather food for the offspring of other group members, seems to be a successful survival strategy with the highly variable rainfall of the savanna. Savanna habitats may have led to cooperative social behavior in other species also.
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04-02-2007 · EurekAlert!
Some 40 years of observations catalogued in the North American Breeding Bird Survey show strikingly different changes in the circumstances of birds preferring various habitats and with various migratory habits
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- Delayed breeding is not necessarily costly to lifetime reproductive success
04-05-2007 · EurekAlert!
Using 24 years of data from the longest-running study of a cooperative bird species on the African continent, researchers at the Universities of Bristol and Cape Town have cast doubt on one of the biggest assumptions in behavioral ecology: that a delayed start to breeding is necessarily costly to reproductive success.
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02-21-2007 · EurekAlert!
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