Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The relative roles of kinship and reciprocity in explaining primate altruism

The relative roles of kinship and reciprocity in explaining primate altruism Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the evolution of altruistic behaviours. Their relative roles in explaining actual cases of animal altruism are, however, unclear. In particular, while kin selection is widely believed to have a pervasive influence on animal behaviour, reciprocity is generally thought to be rare. Despite this general agreement, there has been no direct test comparing the relative roles of kinship and reciprocity in explaining animal altruism. In this paper, we report on the results of such a test based on a meta‐analysis of allogrooming in primates, grooming being probably the most common altruistic behaviour among mammals. In direct contrast to the prevailing view, reciprocity played a much larger role than kinship in explaining primate allogrooming. These results point to a more significant role of reciprocity in the evolution of animal altruism than is generally acknowledged. Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 45–50 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Ecology Letters Wiley

The relative roles of kinship and reciprocity in explaining primate altruism

Schino, Gabriele; Aureli, Filippo
Ecology Letters , Volume 13 (1) – Jan 1, 2010
Download PDF
6 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/the-relative-roles-of-kinship-and-reciprocity-in-explaining-primate-tWQKIWdMhF

References (71)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS
ISSN
1461-023X
eISSN
1461-0248
DOI
10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01396.x
pmid
19840082
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the evolution of altruistic behaviours. Their relative roles in explaining actual cases of animal altruism are, however, unclear. In particular, while kin selection is widely believed to have a pervasive influence on animal behaviour, reciprocity is generally thought to be rare. Despite this general agreement, there has been no direct test comparing the relative roles of kinship and reciprocity in explaining animal altruism. In this paper, we report on the results of such a test based on a meta‐analysis of allogrooming in primates, grooming being probably the most common altruistic behaviour among mammals. In direct contrast to the prevailing view, reciprocity played a much larger role than kinship in explaining primate allogrooming. These results point to a more significant role of reciprocity in the evolution of animal altruism than is generally acknowledged. Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 45–50

Journal

Ecology Letters – Wiley

Published: Jan 1, 2010

There are no references for this article.