By living in social groups with potential competitors, animals forgo monopolizing access to resources. Consequently, debate continues over how selection might favour sociality among competitors. For example, several models exist to account for the evolution of shared reproduction in groups. The 'concession model' hypothesizes that dominant reproducers benefit from the presence of subordinates, ...

0 It is useful to distinguish between the immediate e}ects of species richness on ecosystems and those which become apparent on a longer time scale\ described here as _lter and founder e}ects[ 1 Relationships between plant diversity and ecosystem properties can be explored by classifying component species into three categories Ð dominants\ subordinates and transients[ Dominants recur in particu...

"Limited control" models of reproductive skew in cooperative societies suggest that the frequency of breeding by subordinates is determined by the outcome of power struggles with dominants. In contrast, "optimal skew" models suggest that dominants have full control of subordinate reproduction and allow subordinates to breed only when this serves to retain subordinates' assistance with rearing d...

Grooming is a key social behavior in many primate species. Research has focused on three important aspects: the short- and long-term trading patterns of grooming for itself and/or for other commodities like tolerance or coalitionary support, the issue of whether exchanges are a convincing example for reciprocity, and what decision rules underlie trading. These issues remain largely unresolved d...

Behavioral syndromes or animal personalities may emerge due to covariation with different life-history strategies individual animals pursue, like risk-associated feeding rates translating in different growth trajectories. However, less clear is how this might affect individuals in cooperatively breeding species, where subordinates assist dominants in raising offspring, and growth has profound l...

Prolonged or frequent secretion of adrenal glucocorticoids in response to aversive stimuli can negatively impact reproduction. Because female southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum) reproduce poorly in captivity, we compared fecal corticosterone metabolite concentrations among parous, nulliparous, and adolescent females and examined social and physical aspects of the captive envir...