Cooperative breeders do cooperate

Cooperative breeders do cooperate.

Do avian cooperative breeders live longer?

Cooperative breeding is not common in birds but intriguingly over-represented in several families, suggesting that predisposing factors, similar ecological constraints or a combination of the two facilitate the evolution of this breeding strategy. The life-history hypothesis proposes that cooperative breeding is facilitated by high annual survival, which increases the local population and leads...

Cooperative behaviour in cooperative breeders: costs, benefits, and communal breeding.

In this issue, Bergmüller et al. (2007) have provided a valuable review paper, re-establishing cooperative breeding within a theoretical framework in field studies of cooperative breeding vertebrates. I am in agreement with the authors in their outlook and suggestions. In this critical review, I wish to (1) review the costs and benefits approach previously taken in the field, (2) evaluate commu...

How Do European Firms Cooperate?

This paper presents the existing state of cooperation issues among European manufacturing firms. We have conducted a survey within several European countries and asked their manufacturing firms with at least 20 employees if they are keen to cooperate with other firms and other institutions in the field of R&D with universities and other research institutions, R&D with other firms (customers and...

Biological markets in cooperative breeders: quantifying outside options

A major aim in evolutionary biology is to understand altruistic help and reproductive partitioning in cooperative societies, where subordinate helpers forego reproduction to rear dominant breeders' offspring. Traditional models of cooperation in these societies typically make a key assumption: that the only alternative to staying and helping is solitary breeding, an often unfeasible task. Using...