Camerlenghi Ettore, McQueen Alexandra, Delhey Kaspar, Cook Carly N, Kingma Sjouke A, Farine Damien R, Peters Anne
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.
Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia.
Ecol Lett. 2022 Apr;25(4):766-777. doi: 10.1111/ele.13950. Epub 2022 Jan 9.
Multilevel societies (MLSs), where social levels are hierarchically nested within each other, are considered one of the most complex forms of animal societies. Although thought to mainly occurs in mammals, it is suggested that MLSs could be under-detected in birds. Here, we propose that the emergence of MLSs could be common in cooperatively breeding birds, as both systems are favoured by similar ecological and social drivers. We first investigate this proposition by systematically comparing evidence for multilevel social structure in cooperative and non-cooperative birds in Australia and New Zealand, a global hotspot for cooperative breeding. We then analyse non-breeding social networks of cooperatively breeding superb fairy-wrens (Malurus cyaneus) to reveal their structured multilevel society, with three hierarchical social levels that are stable across years. Our results confirm recent predictions that MLSs are likely to be widespread in birds and suggest that these societies could be particularly common in cooperatively breeding birds.
多级社会（MLSs）中，社会阶层彼此嵌套形成等级制度，被认为是动物社会最复杂的形式之一。尽管人们认为多级社会主要出现在哺乳动物中，但有研究表明，鸟类中的多级社会可能未被充分发现。在此，我们提出，多级社会的出现可能在合作繁殖的鸟类中很常见，因为这两种系统都受到相似的生态和社会驱动因素的青睐。我们首先通过系统比较澳大利亚和新西兰（合作繁殖的全球热点地区）合作繁殖和非合作繁殖鸟类的多级社会结构证据来研究这一命题。然后，我们分析了合作繁殖的华丽细尾鹩莺（Malurus cyaneus）的非繁殖期社交网络，以揭示它们结构化的多级社会，该社会有三个等级社会阶层，且多年来保持稳定。我们的结果证实了最近的预测，即多级社会很可能在鸟类中广泛存在，并表明这些社会在合作繁殖的鸟类中可能尤为常见。
