The relationship between egg size and helper number in cooperative breeders: a meta-analysis across species.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Life history theory predicts that mothers should adjust reproductive investment depending on benefits of current reproduction and costs of reduced future reproductive success. These costs and benefits may in turn depend on the breeding female's social environment. Cooperative breeders provide an ideal system to test whether changes in maternal investment are associated with the social conditions mothers experience. As alloparental helpers assist in offspring care, larger groups might reduce reproductive costs for mothers or alternatively indicate attractive conditions for reproduction. Thus, mothers may show reduced (load-lightening) or increased (differential allocation) reproductive investment in relation to group size. A growing number of studies have investigated how

SUBMITTER: Dixit T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5704713 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature