PSYC 3100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Alloparenting, Biological Specificity, Cleaner Fish
2 Apr 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
A species is called social if during its life cycle, it engages in sustained cooperation that goes beyond parental care and the continued association of mated pairs. In humans these activities also include commodity production, trade, politics, warefar, education and so on. Colonial invertebrates, eusocial insects (hymenoptera), mammals such as lions, elephants, birds (ravens, corvids, jays) primates (apes, humans) Most species live solitarily rather than socially. Benefits: groups of individuals can achieve things that isolated individuals cannot o. Competition between individual for mates, food and other resources. Indirect costs arise as group members must coordinate and compromise their activities to maintain the group cohesion. Cost will dominate for solitary species while the benefits must be high for social species. Division of labour: scanning for predators alternating with feeding. Shared foraging: animals can share foraging duty and share information about feeding sites.
