合作行为在灰喜鹊向高原殖民进程中的表现及动态变化

动物的合作行为在个体适应新环境和社群结构变化中起着重要作用。然而，与合作有关的诸多问题，包括与谁合作、怎样建立合作、合作的存在形式与发生场景，仍欠缺系统性的研究案例。本项目计划在个体和种群两个水平上，探讨灰喜鹊在向青藏高原殖民进程中，三种合作方式（包括合作繁殖、合作型邻里关系、小集团合作）随个体年龄和殖民群侵入生境斑块的时间的变化情况。在个体水平上，包括5个关键问题：1）合作繁殖行为随个体年龄的变化趋势；2）婚外交配（extra-pair copulation, EPC）行为以及因EPC而建立的社交网络随个体年龄的变化趋势；3）个体适合度与EPC社交网络参数的关系；4）亲缘度与EPC行为在建立合作型邻里关系中的相对作用；5）不同场景下，合作者在“小集团”中的行为差异。在种群水平上，涉及的问题包括合作繁殖、EPC社交网络和殖民群的空间遗传结构随殖民群对生境斑块侵入进程的变动规律。

Cooperative behaviors of animals play a key role in their adapting to new habitats, and in driving the structural change of animal societies. However, many cooperation-related questions, including which one to cooperate, how to form cooperation, what is the presentation and under what scenes that cooperation occurs, remain plagued by lacking of a systematic study of cooperation from the dynamic viewpoint. This project is designed to explore the performance and dynamic change of cooperative behaviors of the azure-winged magpie (Cyanapica cyanus) during their process of colonizing the Tibetan Plateau. Based on identifying the age of individuals and the stage of colonies intruding into their habitat patches, we will investigate three types of cooperation in this high-altitude population, the cooperative breeding, cooperative neighborhood and coterie cooperation, as well as their relative importance in colonizing the habitat. At the individual level, we mainly address five questions, 1) the tendency of cooperative breeding with individual age; 2) the change of social networks formed by individuals engaging in extra-pair copulations (EPC) with their age; 3) the influence of centrality parameters of an EPC social network on individual fitness; 4) the relative contribution of genetic relatedness and EPC relationship to the form of cooperative neighborhood; 5) the difference of coterie cooperation under different life-history scenes. Moreover, we will address three questions at the population level that include how does cooperative breeding, EPC social network, and spatial genetic structure of a colony change during its colonizing process of a habitat patch.