Brucks Désirée, Dam Nick C P, Krasheninnikova Anastasia, McGregor Bethan, Tsivlin Hari, von Bayern Auguste M P, Massen Jorg J M
Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Eberhard-Gwinner-Straße, 82319, Seewiesen, Germany.
Loro Parque Fundación, Max-Planck Comparative Cognition Research Station, Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 2;15(1):23558. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-04115-z.
Prosocial behaviours - behaviours that benefit others at low or no cost to the actor - have been associated with cooperative breeding, nesting ecology, and overall levels of dependency and social tolerance. To confirm whether these factors drive the evolution of prosociality, we need to generate more robust data using a comparative approach with a standardised procedure. Parrots present a compelling model group to test this further due to their large brains, and advanced cognitive abilities. Using the group service paradigm, in which individuals can provide food to group memebers, we tested four distantly related parrot species with different socio-ecological backgrounds. All species provided food to group members at moderate to high levels and some individuals of all species were able to discriminate between situations in which food could be provided to others or not. All parrots demonstrated dyadic preferences by providing more food to both affiliated and non-related partners, with sex-specific effects varying between species. Furthermore, males from species that engage in cooperative breeding and territorial nesting provided the most food to members of their group. This implies that cooperative breeding and a reliance on other group members may be driving factors in the evolution of prosocial behaviour in parrots.
亲社会行为——即对行为者自身成本较低或无成本却能使他人受益的行为——已被认为与合作繁殖、筑巢生态以及依赖和社会容忍的总体水平有关。为了确认这些因素是否推动了亲社会行为的进化，我们需要采用标准化程序，通过比较研究方法来生成更可靠的数据。鹦鹉因其大脑较大和认知能力先进，是进一步测试这一观点的极具说服力的模型群体。我们采用群体服务范式，即个体可以为群体成员提供食物，对具有不同社会生态背景的四种亲缘关系较远的鹦鹉物种进行了测试。所有物种都以中等到高水平为群体成员提供食物，并且所有物种的一些个体能够区分是否可以给其他个体提供食物的情况。所有鹦鹉都表现出二元偏好，它们会给有亲缘关系和无亲缘关系的伙伴提供更多食物，不同物种之间存在性别特异性影响。此外，参与合作繁殖和领地筑巢的物种中的雄性为其群体成员提供的食物最多。这意味着合作繁殖以及对其他群体成员的依赖可能是鹦鹉亲社会行为进化的驱动因素。
