Hammers, M, Kingma, SA, Spurgin, LG et al. (5 more authors) (2019) Breeders that receive help age more slowly in a cooperatively breeding bird. Nature Communications, 10 (1). 1301. p. 1301. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Helping by group members is predicted to lead to delayed senescence by affecting the trade-off between current reproduction and future survival for dominant breeders. Here we investigate this prediction in the Seychelles warbler, Acrocephalus sechellensis, in which mainly female subordinate helpers (both co-breeders and non-breeding helpers) often help dominants raise offspring. We find that the late-life decline in survival usually observed in this species is greatly reduced in female dominants when a helper is present. Female dominants with a female helper show reduced telomere attrition, a measure that reflects biological ageing in this and other species. Finally, the probability of having female, but not male, helpers increases with dominant female age. Our results suggest that delayed senescence is a key benefit of cooperative breeding for elderly dominants and support the idea that sociality and delayed senescence are positively self-reinforcing. Such an effect may help explain why social species often have longer lifespans.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Apr 2019 10:50 |
Last Modified: | 02 Dec 2019 14:00 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-019-09229-3 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:144387 |