Meerkat helpers do not specialize in particular activities

By T. H. Clutton-Brock, Andrew F. Russell, L. Sharpe. 2003

99 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6fb8ee43a8cdef59d2119795ed7139b6dee4a6ab

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In Ecology

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Division of labor increases with colony size in the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex californicus (2011, background): “Although division of labor has been evolutionarily elaborated in eusocial insects, it remains a basic attribute of sociality that is expressed by groups of varying size, composition, and complexity (Michener 1974; Fetherston et al. 1990; Stander 1992; Lacey and Sherman 1997; Underwood and Shapiro 19”
Experimental manipulation of helping in a cooperative breeder: helpers ‘pay to stay’ by pre-emptive appeasement (2005, background): “Helping is often associated with direct brood care, which has been studied in great detail in many bird and mammal species, but it may also involve other parental duties such as assistance in territory maintenance or defence against conspecific intruders or predators (e.g. Taborsky & Limberger 1981;”
Division of labour within cooperatively breeding groups (2005, background): “Individuals may decide to invest in one form of helping or all forms (Clutton-Brock et al., 2003).”
Behavioural tactics of breeders in cooperative meerkats (2004, background): “Among nonbreeding subordinates, the relative contributions of individuals to the four main cooperative activities are strongly and positively correlated with each other (Clutton-Brock et al. 2003).”
Variation in Individual Investment Strategies among Social Animals (2006, background): “…(division of labour) might not be fixed for life, but might be the result of age- and weight-dependent polyethisms (Taborsky & Limberger 1981; Taborsky et al. 1986; Lacey & Sherman 1990, 1997; Von Siemens 1990; Heinsohn & Cockburn 1994; Boland et al. 1997; Clutton-Brock et al. 2000, 2001a, 2003).”
Size-dependent task specialization in a cooperative cichlid in response to experimental variation of demand (2011, background): “…Kitchen & Beehner 2007; Desjardins et al. 2008; Pacheco et al. 2008; Ridley & Raihani 2008), much less is known about task specialization between helpers in vertebrates (Taborsky & Limberger 1981; Taborsky et al. 1986; Heinsohn & Cockburn 1994; Clutton-Brock et al. 2000, 2003; Arnold et al. 2005).”