Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, CH-3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland.
Nat Commun. 2013;4:1341. doi: 10.1038/ncomms2344.
Alloparental brood care, where individuals help raising the offspring of others, is generally believed to be favoured by high degrees of relatedness between helpers and recipients. Here we show that in cooperatively breeding cichlids, unrelated subordinate females provide more alloparental care than related ones when kinship between dominant and subordinate group members is experimentally manipulated. In addition, unrelated helpers increased alloparental care after we simulated egg cannibalism by helpers, an effect not shown by related helpers. By supporting predictions of pay-to-stay theory, these results suggest that in Neolamprologus pulcher, reciprocal commodity trading is important for the decision of subordinates to invest in care of the dominants' offspring.
亲代抚育，即个体帮助抚养他人的后代，通常被认为是由帮助者和接受者之间高度的亲缘关系所促进的。在这里，我们表明在合作繁殖的慈鲷中，当支配和从属群体成员之间的亲缘关系被实验操纵时，无关的从属雌性提供的亲代抚育比相关的雌性多。此外，在我们通过帮助者模拟卵食行为后，无关的帮助者增加了亲代抚育，而相关的帮助者则没有表现出这种行为。通过支持“支付留驻”理论的预测，这些结果表明，在 Neolamprologus pulcher 中，互惠商品交易对于从属者决定投资于支配者后代的抚育是很重要的。
