image: Cooperative helper white-browed sparrow weavers assist with the post-natal care of breeders’ young (male, dark beak; female, pink beak). They thereby benefit the post-natal development of offspring and may allow mothers to focus maternal investment on the pre-natal phase, to which helpers cannot contribute directly.
Credit: Andrew J. Young (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
In many cooperative societies (including our own), helpers assist with the post-natal care of breeders’ young, and may thereby benefit the post-natal development of offspring
Mothers in a wild, cooperatively breeding bird lay larger eggs when they will have more help with nestling care, a strategy that may allow helped mothers to focus maternal investment on the pre-natal phase, to which helpers cannot contribute directly
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In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002356
Article Title: Mothers in a cooperatively breeding bird increase investment per offspring at the pre-natal stage when they will have more help with post-natal care
Author Countries: United Kingdom
Funding: The long-term field study was funded by a BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellowship to A.J.Y. (BB/H022716/1) and P.C.-L. was supported by a BBSRC-funded PhD studentship (BB/M009122/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Journal
PLOS Biology
COI Statement
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.