Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on June 22, 2007
Behavioral Ecology 2007 18(5):874-879; doi:10.1093/beheco/arm047
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Parent presence, delayed dispersal, and territory acquisition in the Seychelles warbler
a Animal Ecology Group, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen, PO Box 14, 9750 AA Haren, The Netherlands b Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Address correspondence to C. Eikenaar. E-mail: c.eikenaar{at}rug.nl.
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Abstract |
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The presence of parents in the natal territory may play an important, but often overlooked, role in natal dispersal and the consequent acquisition of a territory. Living with parents in a territory may confer a fitness advantage to subordinates through, for example, the nepotistic behavior of the parents or indirect benefits gained by helping to raise nondescendent kin. When a parent is replaced by a stepparent, such advantages are reduced or disappear and, as a result, subordinates may disperse. Subordinates that disperse after parent replacement may be constrained in their timing of dispersal, which could have negative fitness consequences. In the cooperatively breeding Seychelles warbler, we show that when a parent was naturally replaced or experimentally removed and subsequently replaced by a stepparent from outside the territory, subordinates were more likely to disperse than when both parents remained in the natal territory. Furthermore, subordinates dispersing from territories in which one or both parents had been replaced were less likely to acquire a breeder position than subordinates dispersing when both parents were still on the natal territory. Our findings suggest that the presence of parents in the natal territory may promote delayed dispersal and facilitate the eventual acquisition of a breeder position outside the natal territory. Our results support the idea that the prolonged parental care, which long-lived species are able to provide, may have selected for family living.
Key words: Acrocephalus sechellensis, delayed dispersal, indirect benefits, parent replacement, territory acquisition.
Received 1 March 2007; revised 25 April 2007; accepted 6 May 2007.
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