SOCIAL MATCH · The role of social behaviour in mate choice
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-01-01 → 2022-12-31
- EU contribution
- €184,708
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The role of social behaviour in mate choice
SOCIAL MATCH aimed to study the direct benefit of cooperation. Cooperation is at the very base of our society, and it has been argued that the adoption of cooperative breeding by our hominin ancestors provides the most parsimonious explanation for the origin of human hyper-cooperation. In addition, in humans, cooperation seems to bring not only kin benefits but also sexual benefits by influencing partner choice. Whether cooperative behaviour also influences partner choice in wild animals remains almost unknown. SOCIAL MATCH contributed to understand the principles of cooperation, and this field could and should play a role in determining policies to make our society more inclusive and reflective. I used a cooperative bird, sociable weaver, as a model species. SOCIAL MATCH was designed to specifically test the hypothesis that cooperative behaviours co-evolve with signals indicating both identity and condition-dependent quality, with the final aim to determine whether cooperation can lead to sexual benefits for the actor. Sociable weavers build cooperatively the largest nests among all birds, within each nest structure each breeding group possess a chamber where they live throughout the year. Whitin each breeding group related and, sometimes, unrelated individuals cooperate to feed the chicks and defend the nest. But why? This question has bugged scientists for decades. SOCIAL MATCH main novelty - and challenge - were to develop tools to achieve a precision to quantify individual vocal behaviour and body condition never attained before. Quantifying behaviours precisely is essential to correctly interpret their meaning. With these tools we designed data collection and experiments to understand whether cooperators help only when in good condition and whether they advertise their contributions.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Cooperation is at the very base of our society and it has been argued that the adoption of cooperative breeding by our hominin ancestors provides the most parsimonious explanation for the origin of human hyper-cooperation. In addition, in humans, cooperation seems to bring not only kin benefits but also sexual benefits by influencing partner choice. Whether cooperative behaviour also influences partner choice in wild animals remains almost unknown. Two powerful tools will be used in this project, SOCIAL MATCH, to answer this question. First, statistical analyses of a long-term database including both cooperative behaviour and mating success and, second, new technologies to determine if and how cooperative behaviours can be sexually selected. In my project SOCIAL MATCH, I will focus on the cooperative behaviours of a natural population of a passerine under long-term investigation, the Sociable Weaver (Philetairus socius). I will test the predictions that if cooperation brings sexually selected benefits then it should be linked to mating success, condition and should be advertised. I will measure condition developing automated detection of individual mass. I will quantify the vocal behaviour of cooperating birds using on-board miniature microphones and classify the obtained vocalizations with machine learning algorithm. With the acquired information I will be able to design a playback experiment to explore the links between vocal advertisement of cooperation and probability of finding a mate. Therefore, I will quantify every step from the decision of helping to the breeding phase. Despite their explicit evolutionary relevance, the consequences of sexually selected direct benefits on promoting and maintaining cooperation have remained largely unexplored. SOCIAL MATCH aims to be a keystone project in the path of resolving these questions.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS · ParisCoordinatorFrance
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union