Jan 18, 2022 01:48 AM
Female birds cheat on their partners to encourage cooperation against predators
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-an...predators/
EXCERPTS: Some evolutionary psychologists have spent decades claiming it is natural for males to try to father children with many mothers, while females should be choosier and only pick the best fathers. Scientific evidence has moved on, however, revealing animal dating strategies are far more complex and varied than initially acknowledged.
[...] Adult birds put great effort into protecting their young, but some predators are so much larger or more fearsome that two birds need help to defeat them. It has been suggested that a female who has shown multiple neighbors a good time may have a support network to call on in a crisis. Indeed, blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) populations where extra-pair paternity is common are less likely to lose their entire brood before the young reach adulthood, but the link between these two measures has not been confirmed.
The team tested the idea by setting up nesting boxes in threes. By timing installation, males nesting in Box A got the opportunity to mate with their neighbors, but those housed in boxes B and C were denied the same chance. Stuffed predators were made to appear to threaten nests B and C, and Krams and co-authors watched the responses.
Females showed no interest in helping out their neighbors when threats appeared, and neither did males from boxes B and C. The box A males, however, knowing there was a chance some of the neighboring broods were their own, often joined the defense of those young. They did not, however, neglect their duties in protecting their own nest.
It seems the males had some inkling of the success of their extra-pair mating, turning up much more often when one of the threatened young actually was theirs than when they had mated with the female without result. [...] As with all examples of animal mating behavior, care should be taken before drawing implications for humans – what works for one species often doesn’t apply to others... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-an...predators/
EXCERPTS: Some evolutionary psychologists have spent decades claiming it is natural for males to try to father children with many mothers, while females should be choosier and only pick the best fathers. Scientific evidence has moved on, however, revealing animal dating strategies are far more complex and varied than initially acknowledged.
[...] Adult birds put great effort into protecting their young, but some predators are so much larger or more fearsome that two birds need help to defeat them. It has been suggested that a female who has shown multiple neighbors a good time may have a support network to call on in a crisis. Indeed, blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) populations where extra-pair paternity is common are less likely to lose their entire brood before the young reach adulthood, but the link between these two measures has not been confirmed.
The team tested the idea by setting up nesting boxes in threes. By timing installation, males nesting in Box A got the opportunity to mate with their neighbors, but those housed in boxes B and C were denied the same chance. Stuffed predators were made to appear to threaten nests B and C, and Krams and co-authors watched the responses.
Females showed no interest in helping out their neighbors when threats appeared, and neither did males from boxes B and C. The box A males, however, knowing there was a chance some of the neighboring broods were their own, often joined the defense of those young. They did not, however, neglect their duties in protecting their own nest.
It seems the males had some inkling of the success of their extra-pair mating, turning up much more often when one of the threatened young actually was theirs than when they had mated with the female without result. [...] As with all examples of animal mating behavior, care should be taken before drawing implications for humans – what works for one species often doesn’t apply to others... (MORE - missing details)
