Sibling rivalry: training effects, emergence of dominance and incomplete control

Author:

Benhaiem Sarah1,Hofer Heribert1,Kramer-Schadt Stephanie1,Brunner Edgar2,East Marion L.1

Affiliation:

1. Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Alfred-Kowalke-Strasse 17, 10315 Berlin, Germany

2. Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Statistics, University of Göttingen, Humboldtallee 32, 37073 Göttingen, Germany

Abstract

Within-brood or -litter dominance provides fitness-related benefits if dominant siblings selfishly skew access to food provided by parents in their favour. Models of facultative siblicide assume that dominants exert complete control over their subordinate sibling's access to food and that control is maintained, irrespective of the subordinate's hunger level. By contrast, a recent functional hypothesis suggests that subordinates should contest access to food when the cost of not doing so is high. Here, we show that within spotted hyena ( Crocuta crocuta ) twin litters, dominants most effectively skew access to maternal milk in their favour when their aggression prompts a highly submissive response. When hungry, subordinates were less submissive in response to aggression, thereby decreasing lost suckling time and increasing suckling time lost by dominants. In a species where adult females socially dominate adult males, juvenile females were more often dominant than males in mixed-sex litters, and subordinate sisters used more effective counter-tactics against dominant brothers than subordinate brothers against dominant sisters. Our results provide, to our knowledge, the first evidence in a mammal that dominant offspring in twin litters do not exert complete control over their sibling's access to resources (milk), and that sibling dominance relationships are influenced by sibling sex and training effects.

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine

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