Conflicts of interest and reproductive skew in plural breeding joint nesting birds

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Plural breeding joint nesting birds provide a useful model for understanding cooperation and conflict. Some engage in reproductive competition that wastes group resources. With students, I study two species with different mating system. Smooth-billed anis live in groups of unrelated monogamous pairs, expected to favour their own young at the expense of other group members. Indeed, before starting to lay they reject others' eggs. Once incubation has begun, competitive behaviours end and the they cooperate to incubate eggs and raise chicks. Pukeko form groups in which all breeding males mate with all breeding females. Their interests are much more shared. Males in this system are unlikely to recognize their own genetic offspring. Females could recognize their own eggs, yet our work shows no evidence of egg recognition and a lack of apparent conflict. We will explore conflicts and cooperation in these two species. My students will gain field and lab skills, examining individual roles and parentage along with hormone profiling to determine the effect of mating system affects on the degree of competition and cooperation in these species. Such skills are widely applicable. This is basic research, which contributes to the growing field of evolutionary psychology, thus to our increasing understanding of human behaviour. Beyond the specialized publications from basic research, these species are extremely fascinating and unusual, providing fodder for public natural history presentations (basis for nature shows). We also develop practical molecular markers or tools that will benefit other scientists. For example, we published a method to genotype avian mothers by swabbing the eggshell, which led to related applications in other birds and endangered loggerhead turtles. Earlier NSERC funded research on herring gulls by my group led to another line of research that eventually proved that ambient breathable airborne particles near steel mills cause inherited mutations in exposed mice. Thus, basic research leads to practical and unanticipated spin-offs.