Striped mouse

Striped mouse

Striped mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio) on the cover of the August edition of Behaviour

Striped mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio) on the cover of the August edition of Behaviour
My photo and the accompanying paper (see List of publications) were published in this issue.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Summary: Li & Zhang (2010)

In 1964, Hamilton suggested that kin recognition might be important for mediating the evolution of altruistic behaviour. Li & Zhang (2010) investigated amicable and agonistic social behaviours in Brandt's voles (Lasiopodomys brandti) to determine the mechanism of parent-offspring recognition (prior association / familiarity vs. phenotypic matching). Familiarity involves identification of kin by prior association with them, while phenotypic matching involves identification of kin based on shared family characteristics. Li & Zhang (2010) first examined whether parents could distinguish own from alien offspring, and found that both males and females showed more agonistic behaviour to alien young, indicating discrimination of young. They then used a cross fostering paradigm to investigate the underlying recognition mechanism. They found that parents are more amicable to familiar offspring and more agonistic to unfamiliar offspring (both accounts regardless of relation). Their results suggest that the most likely recognition mechanism in Brandt's voles is familiarity.

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