Find research datasets worth reusing
Search datasets from major research repositories and use ShareScore to quickly assess how well each record supports discovery, access, and reuse.
138
datasets available to search
ShareScore release 0.7.1
Dataset results
138 results for “cooperative breeding”
The impact of helping experience on helper life-history and fitness in a cooperatively breeding bird
<p>The data and accompanying .R scripts were used to test whether having experience as a helper affected a number of different breeding and fitness related parameters in the Seychelles warbler (<em>Acrocephalus sechellensis</em>) in the paper "The impact of helping experience on helper life-history and fitness in a cooperatively breeding bird." </p> <p><strong>Datasets</strong><br><em>statusInfo.xlsx</em>: data collected over a focal individual's lifetime. <br><em>natalInfo.xlsx</em>: data pertaining to the natal environment of the focal bird. <br><em>lastSeen.xlsx</em>: data used to calculate when the bird was last seen alive. <br><em>summerIndex.xlsx</em>: data used to determine whether a particular field period was during a summer or winter season.<br><em>territoryQuality.xlsx</em>: data used to determine the territory quality of each territory during a particular field period.</p> <p><strong>Statistical analyses </strong><br><em>experiencePrep.R</em>: the script used to prepare the data and calculate the necessary model variables prior to running the analyses. <br><em>experienceAnalyses.R</em>: the script used to run the analyses and generate the related graphs. </p> <p>More detailed information regarding the contents of each dataset can be found in the READ.ME</p> <p>From this, we found that helping experience had no significant association with any of the metrics considered, except that individuals with helping experience had an older age at first dominance, and dominant females with helping experience had longer lifespans than those that had never helped. In addition, we found that females with co-breeding experience produced more adult offspring (≥1 year old) after acquiring dominance, and had a higher lifetime reproductive success than females that had never co-bred.</p>
Ecogeography of group size suggests differences in drivers of sociality among cooperatively breeding fairywrens
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Causes of seasonal decline in reproduction of the cooperatively-breeding acorn woodpecker
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data and R code for: Linking climate variability to demography in cooperatively breeding meerkats
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
High temperatures drive offspring mortality in a cooperatively breeding bird
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Offspring sex ratio is affected by pre-breeding rainfall and hatching order in a cooperative breeding bird
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Lifetime trajectories of male mating effort under reproductive conflict in a cooperatively breeding mammal
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Michener’s group-size paradox in cooperatively breeding birds
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
The impact of helping experience on helper life-history and fitness in a cooperatively breeding bird
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Cooperative breeding in birds increases the within-year fecundity mean without increasing the variance: A potential mechanism to buffer environmental uncertainty
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Sex-independent senescence in a cooperatively breeding mammal
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Investigating social and environmental predictors of natal dispersal in a cooperative breeding bird
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Helpers don’t help when it’s hot in a cooperatively breeding bird, the Southern Pied Babbler
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Oxidative costs of cooperation in cooperatively breeding Damaraland mole-rats
Within cooperatively breeding societies, individuals adjust cooperative contributions to maximise indirect fitness and minimize direct fitness costs. Yet, little is known about the physiological costs of cooperation, which may be detrimental to direct fitness. Oxidative stress, the imbalance between reactive oxygen species (by-products of energy production) and antioxidant protection, may represent such a cost when cooperative behaviours are energetically demanding. Oxidative stress can lead to the accumulation of cellular damage, compromising survival and reproduction, thus mediating the trade-off between these competing life history traits. Here we experimentally increased energetically demanding cooperative contributions in captive Damaraland mole-rats (Fukomys damarensis). We quantified oxidative stress related effects of increased cooperation on somatic and germline tissues, and the trade-off between them. Increased cooperative contributions induced oxidative stress in females and males, without increasing somatic damage. Males accumulated oxidative damage in their germline despite an increase in antioxidant defences. Finally, oxidative damage accumulation became biased towards the germline, while antioxidant protection remained biased towards the soma, suggesting that males favour the maintenance of somatic tissues, i.e. survival over reproduction. Our results show that, heightened cooperative contributions can ultimately affect direct fitness through oxidative stress costs, which may represent a key selective pressure for the evolution of cooperation.
Data from: Cost, risk, and avoidance of inbreeding in a cooperatively breeding bird
Inbreeding is often avoided in natural populations by passive processes such as sex-biased dispersal. But, in many social animals, opposite-sexed adult relatives are spatially clustered, generating a risk of incest and hence selection for active inbreeding avoidance. Here we show that, in long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus), a cooperative breeder that risks inbreeding by living alongside opposite-sex relatives, inbreeding carries fitness costs and is avoided by active kin discrimination during mate choice. First, we identified a positive association between heterozygosity and fitness, indicating that inbreeding is costly. We then compared relatedness within breeding pairs to that expected under multiple mate-choice models, finding that pair relatedness is consistent with avoidance of first-order kin as partners. Finally, we show that the similarity of vocal cues offers a plausible mechanism for discrimination against first-order kin during mate choice. Long-tailed tits are known to discriminate between the calls of close kin and nonkin, and they favor first-order kin in cooperative contexts, so we conclude that long-tailed tits use the same kin discrimination rule to avoid inbreeding as they do to direct help toward kin.
Helpers compensate for age-related declines in parental care and offspring survival in a cooperatively breeding bird
<p>Offspring from elderly parents often have lower survival due to parental senescence. In cooperatively breeding species, where offspring care is shared between breeders and helpers, the alloparental care provided by helpers is predicted to mitigate the impact of parental senescence on offspring provisioning and, subsequently, offspring survival. We test this prediction using data from a long-term study on cooperatively breeding Seychelles warblers (<i>Acrocephalus sechellensis</i>). We find that the nestling-provisioning rate of female breeders declines with their age. Further, the total brood provisioning rate and the first-year survival probability of offspring decline progressively with age of the female breeder, but these declines are mitigated when helpers are present. This effect does not arise because individual helpers provide more care in response to the lower provisioning of older dominant females, but because older female breeders have recruited more helpers, thereby receiving more overall care for their brood. We do not find such effects for male breeders. These results indicate that alloparental care can alleviate the fitness costs of senescence for breeders, which suggests an interplay between age and cooperative breeding.</p>
Data from: Multiple benefits drive helping behavior in a cooperatively breeding bird: an integrated analysis
Several hypotheses exist to explain the seemingly altruistic helping behavior of cooperative breeders, although the general utility of these hypotheses remains unclear. While the potential importance of inclusive fitness benefits (kin selection) is traditionally widely appreciated, it is increasingly recognized that direct benefits may be more important than assumed. We use an integrative two-step framework to assess support for current hypotheses in purple-crowned fairy-wrens, a species where subordinates vary in relatedness to breeders and helping increases productivity. After establishing that assumptions of pay-to-stay and social prestige hypotheses (predicting that helping functions as 'paying rent' to stay on the territory or as a signal of individual quality, respectively) were not met, and that parentage by subordinates is extremely rare, we tested whether subordinates adjusted nestling feeding rates following the predictions of the kin selection and group augmentation hypotheses. Benefits of kin selection result from investment in relatives, and group augmentation benefits accrue when subordinates invest more in their own future helpers, for example when they have a better chance of inheriting the breeding position. We found that subordinates fed siblings more than unrelated nestlings, indicating that kin selection could facilitate cooperation. Moreover, the effect of relatedness on feeding effort varied depending on the probability of inheriting a breeding position, suggesting that active group augmentation can explain investment by unrelated subordinates. This statistical interaction would have gone undetected had we not considered both factors simultaneously, illustrating that a focus on single hypotheses could lead to underestimation of their importance in explaining cooperative breeding.
Data from: Variable helper effects, ecological conditions, and the evolution of cooperative breeding in the acorn woodpecker
The ecological conditions leading to delayed dispersal and helping behavior are generally thought to follow one of two contrasting scenarios: that conditions are stable and predictable resulting in young being ecologically forced to remain as helpers (extrinsic constraints and the "habitat saturation" hypothesis), or that conditions are highly variable and unpredictable leading to the need for helpers to raise young, at least when conditions are poor (intrinsic constraints and the "hard life" hypothesis). We investigated how variability in ecological conditions influences the degree to which helpers augment breeder fitness in the cooperatively breeding acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus), a species in which the acorn crop, territory quality, and prior breeding experience all vary in ways that have important effects on fitness. We found that the relationship between ecological conditions and the probability that birds would remain as helpers was variable, but that helpers generally yielded greater fitness benefits when ecological conditions were favorable, rather than unfavorable, for breeding. These results affirm the importance of extrinsic constraints to delayed dispersal and cooperative breeding in this species, despite this species' dependence on a highly variable and unpredictable acorn crop. Our findings also confirm that helpers can have very different fitness effects depending on conditions, but that those effects are not necessarily greater when breeding conditions are unfavorable.
Data from: Fine-scale genetic structure and helping decisions in a cooperatively breeding bird
In animal societies, characteristic demographic and dispersal patterns may lead to genetic structuring of populations, generating the potential for kin selection to operate. However, even in genetically structured populations, social interactions may still require kin discrimination for cooperative behaviour to be directed towards relatives. Here, we use molecular genetics and long-term field data to investigate genetic structure in an adult population of long-tailed tits Aegithalos caudatus, a cooperative breeder in which helping occurs within extended kin networks, and relate this to patterns of helping with respect to kinship. Spatial autocorrelation analyses reveal fine-scale genetic structure within our population, such that related adults of either sex are spatially clustered following natal dispersal, with relatedness among nearby males higher than that among nearby females, as predicted by observations of male-biased philopatry. This kin structure creates opportunities for failed breeders to gain indirect fitness benefits via redirected helping, but crucially, most close neighbours of failed breeders are unrelated and help is directed towards relatives more often than expected by indiscriminate helping. These findings are consistent with the effective kin discrimination mechanism known to exist in long-tailed tits, and support models identifying kin selection as the driver of cooperation.
Evolutionary pathways to communal and cooperative breeding in Carnivores
<p>In animal societies, individuals can cooperate in a variety of tasks, including rearing young. Such cooperation is observed in complex social systems, including communal and cooperative breeding. In mammals, both these social systems are characterized by delayed dispersal and alloparenting, whereas only cooperative breeding involves reproductive suppression. While the evolution of communal breeding has been linked to direct fitness benefits of alloparenting, the direct fitness cost of reproductive suppression has led to the hypothesis that the evolution of cooperative breeding is driven by indirect fitness benefits accrued through raising the offspring of related individuals. To decipher between the evolutionary scenarios leading to communal and cooperative breeding in carnivores, we investigated the coevolution among delayed dispersal, reproductive suppression, and alloparenting. We reconstructed ancestral states and transition rates between these traits. We found that cooperative breeding and communal breeding evolved along separate pathways, with delayed dispersal as the first step for both of them. The three traits coevolved, enhancing and stabilizing each other, which resulted in cooperative social systems being stable as opposed to intermediate configurations. These findings promote the key role of coevolution among traits to stabilize cooperative social systems, and highlight the specificities of evolutionary patterns of sociality in carnivores.</p>
ScienceDex guides
Understand access before you commit
These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.