Family living sets the stage for cooperative breeding and ecological resilience in birds.

ABSTRACT: Cooperative breeding is an extreme form of cooperation that evolved in a range of lineages, including arthropods, fish, birds, and mammals. Although cooperative breeding in birds is widespread and well-studied, the conditions that favored its evolution are still unclear. Based on phylogenetic comparative analyses on 3,005 bird species, we demonstrate here that family living acted as an essential stepping stone in the evolution of cooperative breeding in the vast majority of species. First, families formed by prolonging parent-offspring associations beyond nutritional independency, and second, retained offspring began helping at the nest. These findings suggest that assessment of the conditions that favor the evolution of cooperative breeding can be confounded if this process is not conside

SUBMITTER: Griesser M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5479502 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature