BIOA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Social Grooming, Reciprocal Altruism, Kin Selection
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BIOA02H3 Full Course Notes
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You are studying a group of birds and observe multiple incidents of allogrooming. You notice that most of this grooming involves removing parasites from places that birds cannot reach on themselves (e. g. back of head / neck). Grooming costs the actor as it takes energy to do, but it benefits the recipient because it removes parasites that can impact their health. You observe that birds will groom relatives and non-relatives alike, but will only groom birds that re(cid:272)ipro(cid:272)ate i(cid:374) the future. A(cid:374)y (cid:271)irds that atte(cid:373)pt to (cid:858)(cid:272)heat(cid:859) (cid:271)y (cid:271)e(cid:374)efiti(cid:374)g fro(cid:373) groo(cid:373)i(cid:374)g and refusing to groom the other bird in return eventually cannot find any bird willing to remove their parasites within this group, and are less healthy as a result. Based on this information, which of the potential hypotheses best fits the persistence of allogrooming in the population: by-products benefit, manipulation, reciprocal altruism, kin selection. Distribution area over which population occurs: each little dot represents an individual.
