Synonyms
Definition
Group living with alloparental care
Introduction
Cooperative breeding is characterized by a combination of group living and alloparental care, i.e., the care of others’ offspring. Typically, young of previous broods remain in their natal territory and help raising subsequent offspring of dominant breeders. Hence, the characteristic of cooperative breeding is the joint occurrence of delayed dispersal of young with a propensity to help caring for offspring they have not produced. Such “helpers” may or may not participate in reproduction, but if they do, the majority of young is still produced by more dominant group members. In other words, the “reproductive skew” within groups is usually high.
There are numerous variations of this general pattern, which differs also systematically between taxonomic groups. In birds and mammals, for example, there are two prevailing patterns: either young that delay dispersal from their natal territory...
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References
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Taborsky, M. (2016). Cooperative Breeding. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3057-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3057-1
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