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Promiscuity and the evolutionary transition to complex societies

Nature 466, 969–972 (19 August 2010) | Download Citation

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Abstract

Theory predicts that the evolution of cooperative behaviour is favoured by low levels of promiscuity leading to high within-group relatedness1,2,3,4,5. However, in vertebrates, cooperation often occurs between non-relatives and promiscuity rates are among the highest recorded. Here we resolve this apparent inconsistency with a phylogenetic analysis of 267 bird species, demonstrating that cooperative breeding is associated with low promiscuity; that in cooperative species, helping is more common when promiscuity is low; and that intermediate levels of promiscuity favour kin discrimination. Overall, these results suggest that promiscuity is a unifying feature across taxa in explaining transitions to and from cooperative societies.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Hadfield for statistical advice, K. Boomsma, S. Nakagawa and B. Sheldon for comments and discussion, M. Nelson-Flower and P. Brennan for access to unpublished data, and the ERC and Royal Society for funding. The compilation of our data set was made possible by access to the collections of the Alexander Library.

Author information

    • Charlie K. Cornwallis
    •  & Ashleigh S. Griffin

    These authors contributed equally to this work.

Affiliations

  1. Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK

    • Charlie K. Cornwallis
    •  & Ashleigh S. Griffin

  2. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK

    • Stuart A. West

  3. Department of Entomology, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK

    • Katie E. Davis

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Contributions

All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ashleigh S. Griffin.

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    Supplementary Information

    This file contains Supplementary model code, Supplementary Figure 1 with legend, Supplementary Tables 1-15 and References.

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https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09335

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