Ecology and Evolution of Cooperative Breeding in Birds

Hardback  304 pp, 31 line diags, 15 tabs  ISBN 0521822718      £100.00

Softback  304 pp, 31 line diags, 15 tabs  ISBN 0521530997      £38.00

Cooperative breeders are species in which more than a pair of individuals assist in the production of young. Cooperative breeding is found in only a few hundred bird species world-wide, and understanding this often strikingly altruistic behaviour has remained an important challenge in behavioural ecology for over 30 years. This book highlights the theoretical, empirical and technical advances that have taken place in the field of cooperative breeding research since the publication of the seminal work Cooperative Breeding in Birds: Long-term Studies of Behavior and Ecology. Organized conceptually, special attention is given to ways in which cooperative breeders have proved fertile subjects for testing modern advances to classic evolutionary problems including those of sexual selection, sex-ratio manipulation, life-history evolution, partitioning of reproduction and incest avoidance. It will be of interest to both students and researchers interested in behaviour and ecology.

Contents

Introduction 1
WALTER D. KOENIG AND JANIS L. DICKINSON

1 Evolutionary origins 5
J. DAVID LIGON AND D. BRENT BURT

2 Delayed dispersal 35
JAN EKMAN, JANIS L. DICKINSON, BEN J. HATCHWELL, AND MICHAEL GRIESSER

3 Fitness consequences of helping 48
JANIS L. DICKINSON AND BEN J. HATCHWELL

4 Parental care, load-lightening, and costs 67
ROBERT G. HEINSOHN

5 Mating systems and sexual conflict 81
ANDREW COCKBURN

6 Sex-ratio manipulation 102
JAN KOMDEUR

7 Physiological ecology 117
MORNÉ A. DU PLESSIS

8 Endocrinology 128
STEPHAN J. SCHOECH, S. JAMES REYNOLDS, AND RAOUL K. BOUGHTON

9 Incest and incest avoidance 142
WALTER D. KOENIG AND JOSEPH HAYDOCK

10 Reproductive skew 157
ROBERT D. MAGRATH, RUFUS A. JOHNSTONE, AND ROBERT G. HEINSOHN

11 Joint laying systems 177
SANDRA L. VEHRENCAMP AND JAMES S. QUINN

12 Conservation biology 197
JEFFREY R. WALTERS, CAREN B. COOPER, SUSAN J. DANIELS, GILBERTO PASINELLI, AND KARIN SCHIEGG

13 Mammals: comparisons and contrasts 210
ANDREW F. RUSSELL

14 Summary 228
STEPHEN PRUETT-JONES

Names of bird and mammal species mentioned in the text 239
References 242
Taxonomic index 279
Subject index 290