Indiscriminate Altruism in meerkats

Question 1

The Evolution of indiscriminate altruism in cooperatively breeding mammals

Author & date?

Answer 1

Duncan et al 2019

Question 2

What is kin selection?

Answer 2

Altruistic behaviours can increase the fitness of altruists when recipients are genetic relatives

Question 3

Do meekats show kin-selection?

Answer 3

Indiscriminate altrustist - did not alter behaviour depending on relatedness

Question 4

What is indiscriminate altruism

Answer 4

Altrusism that doesn’t discriminate against non-kin

Question 5

Which holds more benefits: indiscriminate altruism or kin discrimination?

Answer 5

The study showed indiscriminate altruism may hold better fitness benefits

Question 6

What is the inclusive fitness theory?

Answer 6

Altruism is more likely to evolve when social partner are closely genetically related

Question 7

What two types of results did the study get?

Answer 7

Emperical and Theoretical

Question 8

What did the theoretical evidence show regarding kin recognition errors?

Answer 8

Indiscriminate altruism may be positively selected when kin recognition is prone to error

Question 9

What did the study investigate?

Answer 9

“here, we explore emperical data on cooperation among cooperatively breeding meerkats and use data on the relatedness structure of meerkat groups to develop such model.”

Question 10

What were the measures of cooperation in the study?

Answer 10

1. Babysitting
2. Pup feeding
3. Guarding
4. Digging

Question 11

What types of behaviours were babysitting and pup feeding?

Answer 11

Litter-directed behaviours

Question 12

What type of behaviour are digging and guarding?

Answer 12

Group directed

Question 13

Emperical Result (1)
What were helper contrubutions related to?

Answer 13

Contributions of helpers were related to the size of their group and varied with age, sex, and condition

Question 14

Emperical results (2)
How did cooperative behaviours alter with group size?

Answer 14

Across all four cooperative behaviours, the contributions of helpers to all cooperative behaviours declined with increasing group size.

Question 15

Emperical results (3)
What were the contributions of the sexes?

Answer 15

• Contributions differed between sexes.
• Males invested more than females in guarding and digging
• Females invested more in pup-directed behaviours

Question 16

Emperical results (4)
How did behaviour investment change as induviduals got older?

Answer 16

individuals invested less in pup feeding and digging as they matured and more into babysitting and guarding

Question 17

Emperical results: Significant / non-significant results

Answer 17

• non-significant or very small significance in relatedness with any of the cooperative behaviours
• A small significant positive association between dominant female relatedness and pup-feeding expression
• Increased feeding effort of 5.8% if dom female is full sib
• Small significant association between digging and relatedness to dom female

Question 18

What does the model from the study show?

Modeling results

Answer 18

Indiscriminate altruism can be advantageous when error-prone kin discrimination is high

Question 19

What does the study suggest about the digging significant result?

Answer 19

It may be a statistical artifact

Question 20

The theoretical results

Answer 20

Indiscriminate altruism yields higher payoffs than kin discriminations where:
1. Kin discrimination is prone to error
2. Mean relatedness among social partners is high
3. The relative benefits of helping are large

Question 21

Conclusions of the paper

Answer 21

• Cooperatively breeding meerkats are largely indiscriminate altruists who do not substantially increase their cooperative efforts when more closely related.
• They suggest that indiscriminate altruism may evolve when group relatedness is high and when kin recognition is prone to error