Cooperation, status, and altruism in a mixed society of Amazonian parrots

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint.

Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Authors

Kyle Schuyler Van Houtan, Jose-Ignacio Rojas-Moscoso, Hope Noelle Van Houtan, Oscar Gonzalez

Abstract

Parrots are a highly intelligent taxon whose complex behaviors in wild societies require description. Here we observed 12 species of parrots, macaws, and parakeets in mixed flocks foraging on exposed cliffs in southeast Perú. For each species, we developed a single bootstrapped index of sociality from 9 derived metrics of abundance, chronology, functional roles, and agonistic interactions. This multivariate index emphasizes species that join flocks in large numbers, participate early, serve in functional roles, interact with others, and are socially dominant. We used Random Forest (“RF”) algorithms to build nonlinear multiple regressions to assess and rank the influence of a suite of taxonomic and morphometric factors on sociality. The RF models performed well (R2 = 0.96) and indicate species with smaller brains (controlled for body size) and lower dispersal abilities are most social, though the underlying mechanisms may be indirect. In addition, we document a distinct sequence of species flock participation where subordinate species serve as nuclear species that initiate flock assembly and foraging, while dominant species serve as sentinels, foraging after subordinates. This suggests cooperation in this mixed society features sequenced tradeoffs and reciprocal altruism.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X2703X

Subjects

Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

social status, dominance, pioneers, brain size, pioneers, sentinels, altruism, brain size, dominance

Dates

Published: 2024-10-17 09:29

Last Updated: 2024-10-17 16:29

License

CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Language:
English

Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflicts of interest

Data and Code Availability Statement:
All datasets and code used here are available at a third-party repository, GitHub at bit.ly/3qW45Md