helpers at the nest improve late-life offspring performance evidence from a long-term study and a cross-foster experiment助手在鸟巢改善老年后代表现证据来自一个长期研究和cross-foster实验.pdfVIP

Helpers at the Nest Improve Late-Life Offspring Performance: Evidence from a Long-Term Study and a Cross-Foster Experiment Lyanne Brouwer1,2*, David S. Richardson3,4, Jan Komdeur1,5 1 Animal Ecology group, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands, 2 Evolution, Ecology and Genetics, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 3 Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, School of Biological Sciences, ´ University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom, 4 Nature Seychelles, Mahe, Republic of Seychelles, 5 Behavioural Ecology and Self-organisation, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands Abstract Background: Conditions during an individual’s rearing period can have far reaching consequences for its survival and reproduction later in life. Conditions typically vary due to variation in parental quality and/or the environment, but in cooperative breeders the presence of helpers adds an important component to this. Determining the causal effect of helpers on offspring fitness is difficult, since high-quality breeders or territories are likely to produce high-quality offspring, but are also more likely to have helpers because of past reproductive success. This problem is best resolved by comparing the effect of both helping and non-helping subordinates on offspring fitness, however species in which both type of subordinates commonly occur are rare. Methodology/Principal Findings: We used multi-state capture-recapture models on 20 years of data to investigate the effect of rearing conditions on survival and recruitment in the cooperativel