Projects per year
Abstract
Because virtually all organisms compete with others in their social environment, mechanisms that reduce conflict between interacting individuals are crucial for the evolution of stable families, groups, and societies. Here, we tested whether costs of social conflict over territorial space between Seychelles warblers (Acrocephalus sechellensis) are mitigated by kin-selected (genetic relatedness) or mutualistic (social familiarity) mechanisms. By measuring longitudinal changes in individuals’ body mass and telomere length, we demonstrated that the fitness costs of territoriality are driven by a complex interplay between relatedness, familiarity, local density, and sex. Physical fights were less common at territory boundaries shared between related or familiar males. In line with this, male territory owners gained mass when living next to related or familiar males and also showed less telomere attrition when living next to male kin. Importantly, these relationships were strongest in high-density areas of the population. Males also had more rapid telomere attrition when living next to unfamiliar male neighbors, but mainly when relatedness to those neighbors was also low. In contrast, neither kinship nor familiarity was linked to body mass or telomere loss in female territory owners. Our results indicate that resolving conflict over territorial space through kin-selected or mutualistic pathways can reduce both immediate energetic costs and permanent somatic damage, thus providing an important mechanism to explain fine-scale population structure and cooperation between different social units across a broad range of taxa.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | E9036–E9045 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) |
Volume | 114 |
Issue number | 43 |
Early online date | 9 Oct 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 24 Oct 2017 |
Keywords
- Kin selection
- mutualism
- territoriality
- telomeres
- social conflict
Profiles
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David Richardson
- School of Biological Sciences - Professor in Evolutionary Ecology
- Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation - Member
- Organisms and the Environment - Member
Person: Research Group Member, Academic, Teaching & Research
Projects
- 2 Finished
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Transgenerational impacts on senescence: quantitative genetics of cellular and organismal ageing in the wild
Richardson, D. & Barrett, E.
Natural Environment Research Council
1/03/13 → 28/02/17
Project: Research
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Telomeres as biomarkers of cost and quality in a wild vertebrate population
Natural Environment Research Council
13/07/09 → 12/10/12
Project: Research
Datasets
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Primary data Bebbington et al. 2017 PNAS.xlsx
Bebbington, K. (Creator), Kingma, S. (Creator), Fairfield, E. (Creator), Dugdale, H. L. (Creator), Komdeur, J. (Creator), Spurgin, L. (Creator) & Richardson, D. (Creator), Figshare, 2017
DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.5432089.v1
Dataset