Pup guarding by greater spear-nosed bats |
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Authors: | Kirsten M Bohn Cynthia F Moss Gerald S Wilkinson |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA;(2) Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA;(3) Present address: Department of Biology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA |
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Abstract: | Alloparental care poses an evolutionary dilemma because effort is expended on non-filial offspring. Thus, instances of alloparental
care have been attributed to either mistaken identity, (i.e., recognition errors) or active cooperation. In greater spear-nosed
bats (Phyllostomus hastatus), reproductive females roost together in stable long-term social groups in cave ceilings. Non-volant pups frequently fall
from roost sites to the cave floor where they can die unless retrieved by an adult. In this study, we examined the function
of adult female visits to non-filial young and tested whether visits were attributable to recognition errors or to cooperation.
We found that females visited non-filial pups from their own social group more than expected. Females from different social
groups attacked and sometimes killed pups, and male pups were attacked more frequently than female pups. Visits by group mates
benefited fallen pups by reducing the likelihood of attack by females from other groups. In contrast to the mistaken identity
hypothesis, we found that some females leave their own pups to approach and remain with group mates’ pups. We used microsatellite
markers to estimate relatedness and test whether kinship could explain this alloparental care and found that females were
unrelated to the pups they guard. We conclude that females who reside in highly stable social groups exhibit cooperative behavior
that cannot be explained by kinship and is unlikely to be due to direct or generalized reciprocity. Instead, our data suggest
that alloparental care likely involves a complex interplay between group membership and cooperative foraging. |
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