When to kill and when to care for another female's offspring?

Le 19 Juin 2015
11h30 Grande salle de réunion du CEFE - 1e étage, aile C

 Dieter Lukas

Univ. of Cambridge

dl384@cam.ac.uk

 

Female relationships across mammals range from highly supportive to intensively aggressive, often within the same species. While differences in the structure of female relationships may have played a major role in the evolution of mammalian sociality (Lukas & Clutton-Brock 2013), only few studies have investigated why and how female interactions differ across species. In this presentation, I will show that competition between females is frequently as intense as what has been reported for males (Lukas & Clutton-Brock 2014), and that variation in the intensity of female competition is linked to female reproductive investment. Finally, I will discuss how competition influences cooperation between females (MacLeod & Lukas 2014).

Lukas, D. & Clutton-Brock, T. H. 2013. The evolution of social monogamy in mammals. Science, 341, 526-530.

 

MacLeod, K. J. & Lukas, D. Revisiting non-offspring nursing: allonursing evolves when the costs are low. Biology Letters, 10, 20140378.

 

Lukas, D. & Clutton-Brock, T. Costs of mating competition limit male lifetime breeding success in polygynous mammals. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 281, 20140418.

 

 

Contact Elise Huchard

 

          Contact du Comité SEEM: seem@services.cnrs.fr.    

          Contact du Labex CEMEB: gestion.cemeb@univ-montp2.fr,  www.labex-cemeb.org.