Symposium number: 03

Title: EMERGING ISSUES IN COOPERATIVE BREEDING RESEARCH

Principal organizer: Jeff Walters
Virginia Tech, Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061 0406, USA
email: jrwalt@vt.edu

Second organizer: Jan Komdeur
University of Groningen, Animal Ecology Group, University of Groningen, PO Box 14, 9750 AA, Haren, The Netherlands

First keynote speaker: Ben Hatchwell
University of Sheffield, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, England
Title of first keynote paper: Kin selection and recognition mechanisms in avian societies

Second keynote speaker: Jan Ekman
Uppsala University, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Norbyv 18D, 752 36, Uppsala, Sweden
Title of second keynote paper: The group living route to cooperative breeding

Contributed talks

Symposium description: The objective of the symposium is to explore the implications of recent work for long-standing questions about the evolution of cooperative breeding, focusing on research on kin recognition and dispersal decisions. Indirect fitness benefits accrued by subordinates that are constrained from breeding may explain helping behaviour, and may influence decisions by individuals to remain in a group as subordinates rather than disperse. The advent of powerful molecular genotyping techniques make it possible to measure indirect fitness benefits more precisely than previously; and experimental studies of kin recognition mechanisms reveal the extent to which behaviour may be kin directed.
The dispersal decisions that result from group formation in most cooperative breeders also involve direct fitness benefits. In this case, new understanding is based on conceptual advances resulting especially from studies of species in which delayed dispersal, but not helping behaviour, occurs. The broad interpretive perspective emerging sees helpers along with floaters and early dispersers as outcomes within the same evolutionary framework. In this symposium we hope to highlight these and other recent avenues of investigation that promise to increase our understanding of the evolution of cooperative breeding.
 

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