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- Title
Is helping a beneficial learning experience for red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) helpers?
- Authors
Khan, M. Z.; Walters, J. R.
- Abstract
Several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the evolution and maintenance of helping behavior in cooperatively breeding birds, one of which we investigated in the red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis). Helping may provide a learning experience that improves reproductive success once the helper becomes a breeder. We used data collected from a population of red-cockaded woodpeckers in the Sandhills of North Carolina to compare the reproductive success of 2-year-old breeders that were helpers at age 1 (helping experience) to those that were floaters or solitary males at age 1 (no helping experience). Reproductive success of the two groups was similar, indicating that helping provides no experience useful in reproduction. We reject the learning experience hypothesis as an explanation for the maintenance of helping behavior in red-cockaded woodpeckers.
- Subjects
ECOLOGY; RED-cockaded woodpecker; BIRDS
- Publication
Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology, 1997, Vol 41, Issue 2, p69
- ISSN
0340-5443
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s002650050365