Decoration supplementation and male–male competition in the great bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis): a test of the social control hypothesis

Many animals use signals to communicate their social status to conspecifics, and the social control hypothesis suggests that social interactions maintain the evolutionary stability of status signals: low-quality individuals signal at a low level to prevent high-quality individuals from “punishing” them. I examined whether the numbers of decorations at bowers are socially controlled in the great bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis). In two populations, I supplemented males with decorations to determine whether they (a) rejected supplemental decorations and (b) experienced increased bower destruction from rivals. In contrast to the social control hypothesis, males in both populations accepted most supplemental decorations. Though the mean destruction rate did not increase during supplementation in either population, one of the study populations (Townsville) exhibited a negative correlation between the numbers of decorations naturally displayed at bowers and the change in destruction rate during the experiment. Townsville males that naturally had few decorations at their bowers also had more decorations stolen by other males during supplementation than males that naturally had many decorations. These results suggest that the numbers of decorations at bowers are an honest signal of the male's ability to defend his display site from rivals in at least one population of the great bowerbird (Townsville), but they do not support the social control hypothesis because males at both sites failed to limit signal expression. I discuss how the external nature of bower decorations and their availability in the environment may influence the costs and benefits of decoration theft and social control

The importance of the altricial – precocial spectrum for social complexity in mammals and birds:A review

Various types of long-term stable relationships that individuals uphold, including cooperation and competition between group members, define social complexity in vertebrates. Numerous life history, physiological and cognitive traits have been shown to affect, or to be affected by, such social relationships. As such, differences in developmental modes, i.e. the ‘altricial-precocial’ spectrum, may play an important role in understanding the interspecific variation in occurrence of social interactions, but to what extent this is the case is unclear because the role of the developmental mode has not been studied directly in across-species studies of sociality. In other words, although there are studies on the effects of developmental mode on brain size, on the effects of brain size on cognition, and on the effects of cognition on social complexity, there are no studies directly investigating the link between developmental mode and social complexity. This is surprising because developmental differences play a significant role in the evolution of, for example, brain size, which is in turn considered an essential building block with respect to social complexity. Here, we compiled an overview of studies on various aspects of the complexity of social systems in altricial and precocial mammals and birds. Although systematic studies are scarce and do not allow for a quantitative comparison, we show that several forms of social relationships and cognitive abilities occur in species along the entire developmental spectrum. Based on the existing evidence it seems that differences in developmental modes play a minor role in whether or not individuals or species are able to meet the cognitive capabilities and requirements for maintaining complex social relationships. Given the scarcity of comparative studies and potential subtle differences, however, we suggest that future studies should consider developmental differences to determine whether our finding is general or whether some of the vast variation in social complexity across species can be explained by developmental mode. This would allow a more detailed assessment of the relative importance of developmental mode in the evolution of vertebrate social systems

Dominance hierarchies and associated signalling in a cooperative passerine

In animal societies, individuals face the dilemma of whether to cooperate or to compete over a shared resource. Two intertwined mechanisms may help to resolve this enduring evolutionary dilemma by preventing conflicts and thereby mediating the costs of living in groups: the establishment of dominance hierarchies and the use of ‘badge-of-status’ for signalling dominance. We investigated these two mechanisms in the sociable weaver (Philetairus socius), a colonial and social passerine which cooperates over multiple tasks. We examined the sociable weavers’ dominance structure in 2 years by recording 2563 agonistic interactions between 152 individuals observed at a feeder at eight colonies. We tested which individual traits, including sex, age, relatedness and two melanin-based plumage traits, predicted variation in social status. First, using social network analysis, we found that colonies were structured by strongly ordered hierarchies which were stable between years. Second, medium-ranked birds engaged more in aggressive interactions than highly ranking individuals, suggesting that competition over food is most pronounced among birds of intermediate social status. Third, we found that colony size and kinship influenced agonistic interactions, so aggression was less pronounced in smaller colonies and among relatives. Finally, within- and between-individual variation in social status and the presence of an individual at the feeder were associated with variation in bib size, as predicted by the badge-of-status hypothesis. These results suggest that dominance hierarchies and bib size mediate conflicts in sociable weaver societies

Mediating male–male interactions: the role of the UV blue crest coloration in blue tits

Badges of status, usually color patches, are hypothesised to serve as important signals within natural populations by communicating individual’s fighting ability or aggressiveness before an interaction ever takes place. These signals, which may evolve via sexual and/or social selection, mediate intra-specific competition by influencing the outcome or escalation of contests between individuals. The last 10 years saw the rise of interest in the role of Ultraviolet (UV)-based coloration in intra-sexual communication. However, the rare experimental studies that tested this hypothesis found opposite results, which may originate from the different methodological procedures used to assess badge of status theory. We present here the results of an experiment testing whether male blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) respond differently to unfamiliar conspecifics presenting contrasted UV crest coloration. In an aviary, we simultaneously presented two caged blue tits with enhanced (UV+) or reduced (UV-) crest coloration to a focal bird. We found that focal males acted more aggressively towards the UV- males than UV+ males. In addition, focal males fed more often close to males that were similar in brightness or duller than themselves. We conclude that, in blue tits, UV-blue crest coloration affects both social and aggressive responses towards unfamiliar individuals, and thus it has some properties of a badge of status