All About Birds : Uncertainty Breeds Cooperation in Birds, Study Finds
[[ In the August 21 issue of ]]
[[ Current Biology ]]
[[ , authors Dustin Rubenstein and Irby Lovette report that among African starlings, cooperative breeding is most common among species that live in savannas, where the rainfall varies greatly from one year to the next. ]]
{{ The Superb Starling ( }}
{{ Lamprotornis superbus }}
{{ ) is a complex cooperative breeder that lives in large family groups throughout the savannas of East Africa. Social groups can contain as many as 30 individuals. Photo by Dustin Rubenstein, Kenya }}
{{ “When you don’t know what conditions you will be facing in the next breeding season, it pays???in an evolutionary sense???to live and breed in family groups because more chicks survive over the long haul,” said lead author Rubenstein, who initiated the study as part of his graduate work in the Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He received his doctorate from Cornell University in May 2006. }} |
