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Savanna habitat drives birds, and perhaps others, to cooperative breeding
Date:8/16/2007

the group to try to breed elsewhere, so it is the males who often hang around for a year or two as helpers, primarily bringing food to the nestlings. Although they may occasionally breed with females in the group, the helpers often don't reproduce until later in life.

Helping relatives feed their kids increases the chances of passing on some of your genes, since siblings share a large proportion of their DNA. Yet, despite decades of research, it is still not clear why some animal species, including nearly 10 percent of bird species worldwide, show this apparently altruistic behavior, while other closely related ones do not.

In an attempt to answer this question, Rubenstein looked at the 45 species of starlings endemic to Africa to see if there was any relationship between cooperative breeding and the environment in which the birds live.

"Starlings are a model system in which to test this question because they are one of the most socially diverse groups in the world, exhibiting a wide range of social systems and living in a variety of different habitats across Africa," said Rubenstein.

Of the 117 known starling species worldwide, those in Africa, where savannas are extremely common, are the only ones known to engage in cooperative breeding. Those in the more temperate or jungle environments of Europe, Africa and Asia, including the European starling Sturnus vulgaris introduced to America, do not.

For much of the past decade, Rubenstein has intensively studied the social behavior of a variety of starling species in Kenya, home to 26 species - the most of any country in the world. Noting an apparent correlation between cooperative breeding and habitat in this family, he decided to use this socially diverse group to test several hypotheses about how environmental factors may have influenced the evolution of cooperative breeding.

Rubenstein and colleague Irby J. Lovette, director of the Fuller Evolutionary Biology Pro
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Contact: Robert Sanders
rsanders@berkeley.edu
510-643-6998
University of California - Berkeley
Source:Eurekalert

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