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Cooperative Behaviour (cooperative + behaviour)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	88%

Selected Abstracts

Social Fractionalization, Endogenous Appropriation Norms, and Economic Development

ECONOMICA, Issue 298 2008
INES LINDNER
We investigate how social composition affects competitive and cooperative behaviour in a linear growth model without secure property rights. If a society is homogeneous or highly fractionalized, it is in the self-interest of people to cooperate. The first-best allocation is enforced through trigger strategies, and growth is independent from social structure. If a society is polarized, i.e. if it consists of a small number of groups, the first-best solution can turn out to be unenforceable and groups will follow an exploitative strategy. In this case, the rate of growth is monotonously decreasing in the degree of fractionalization. [source]

Cryptic Kin Selection: Kin Structure in Vertebrate Populations and Opportunities for Kin-Directed Cooperation

ETHOLOGY, Issue 3 2010
Ben J. Hatchwell
Animal societies of varying complexity have been the favoured testing ground for inclusive fitness theory, and there is now abundant evidence that kin selection has played a critical role in the evolution of cooperative behaviour. One of the key theoretical and empirical findings underlying this conclusion is that cooperative systems have a degree of kin structure, often the product of delayed dispersal, that facilitates interactions with relatives. However, recent population genetic studies have revealed that many non-cooperative animals also have kin-structured populations, providing more cryptic opportunities for kin selection to operate. In this article, I first review the evidence that kin structure is widespread among non-cooperative vertebrates, and then consider the various contexts in which kin selection may occur in such taxa, including: leks, brood parasitism, crèches, breeding associations, territoriality and population dynamics, foraging and predator deterrence. I describe the evidence that kin-selected benefits arise from interacting with kin in each of these contexts, notwithstanding the potential costs of kin competition and inbreeding. I conclude that as the tools required to determine population genetic structure are readily available, measurement of kin structure and the potential for kin selection on a routine basis is likely to reveal that this process has been an important driver of evolutionary adaptation in many non-cooperative as well as cooperative species. [source]

Reconciliation in Wolves (Canis lupus): New Evidence for a Comparative Perspective

ETHOLOGY, Issue 3 2008
Giada Cordoni
Social animals gain benefits from cooperative behaviours. However, social systems also imply competition and conflict of interest. To cope with dispersal forces, group-living animals use several peace-keeping tactics, which have been deeply investigated in primates. Other taxa, however, have been often neglected in this field research. Wolves (Canis lupus) with their high sociality and cooperative behaviour may be a good model species to investigate the reconciliation process. In this study, we provide the first evidence for the occurrence of reconciliation in a group of zoo-kept wolves. The conciliatory contacts were uniformly distributed across the different sex-class combinations. We found a linear dominance hierarchy in the colony under study, although the hierarchical relationships did not seem to affect the reconciliation dynamics. Moreover, both aggressors and victims initiated first post-conflict affinitive contact with comparable rates and both high- and low-intensity conflicts were reconciled with similar percentages. Finally, we found that coalitionary support may be a good predictor for high level of conciliatory contacts in this species. [source]

Individual distinctiveness in the mobbing call of a cooperative bird, the noisy miner Manorina melanocephala

JOURNAL OF AVIAN BIOLOGY, Issue 5 2009
Robert A. W. Kennedy
Individual differentiation is usually advantageous in maximising the fitness benefits of interactions with conspecifics. In social species, where intraspecific interactions are frequent, this is likely to be particularly important. Indeed, some form of differentiation underpins most hypotheses proposed to account for cooperative behaviour in birds. The auditory modality is a likely candidate for this function, particularly for species where individuals are widely spaced and in dense vegetation. In this study, we examined the acoustic structure of a distinctive mobbing signal, the ,chur' call, of the cooperatively breeding noisy miner Manorina melanocephala. Using 250,calls from 25 individuals, a combination of spectrographic-based measurement of call parameters, cross-correlation and multi-dimensional scaling was used to test for systematic individual differences in call structure. Strong differences between individuals were observed in all measures, indicating that this call encodes sufficient information to facilitate individual differentiation. We then conducted a series of field playbacks to test the effect of the behaviour on conspecifics. Results demonstrated that the call, in isolation, has a clear attractant effect. Given that chur calls are synonymous with the characteristic cooperative mobbing behaviour of this species, these findings suggest they are likely to have an important function in coordinating complex social behaviour. [source]

Consistent individual differences in cooperative behaviour in meerkats (Suricata suricatta)

JOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, Issue 8 2010
S. ENGLISH
Abstract Although recent models for the evolution of personality, using game theory and life-history theory, predict that individuals should differ consistently in their cooperative behaviour, consistent individual differences in cooperative behaviour have rarely been documented. In this study, we used a long-term data set on wild meerkats to quantify the repeatability of two types of cooperative care (babysitting and provisioning) within individuals and examined how repeatability varied across age, sex and status categories. Contributions to babysitting and provisioning were significantly repeatable and positively correlated within individuals, with provisioning more repeatable than babysitting. While repeatability of provisioning was relatively invariant across categories of individuals, repeatability of babysitting increased with age and was higher for subordinates than dominants. These results provide support for theoretical predictions that life-history trade-offs favour the evolution of consistent individual differences in cooperative behaviour and raise questions about why some individuals consistently help more than others across a suite of cooperative behaviours. [source]

Influence of oxidation and crosslinking on oxygen binding properties of mouse erythrocytes

CELL BIOCHEMISTRY AND FUNCTION, Issue 2 2001
L. A. Lotero
Abstract Different chemical treatments for mouse erythrocyte modification has been used. Oxidation treatments with Ascorbate/Fe3+, a system able to react with intracellular proteins, produced a displacement of the O2 binding equilibrium curve to a higher affinity behaviour with loss of the haemoglobin cooperativity for oxygen binding. Incubation of mouse erythrocytes with diamide showed that at low reagent concentration (0.8,mM) no modification on oxygen binding equilibrium curves was observed. At higher reagent concentration (2.0,mM), an increased affinity and a disappearance of the cooperative behaviour can be observed. Additionally, crosslinking reactions on mouse erythrocytes with band 3 crosslinkers seemed to affect oxygen binding properties when used at a crosslinker concentration of 5,mM. Oxyhaemoglobin levels in crosslinked and diamide-treated erythrocytes are similar to those found in control cells. In contrast, ascorbate/Fe3+ treatments produced an increment in the proportion of methaemoglobin, decreasing the oxyhaemoglobin levels in these oxidized erythrocytes. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]