An interesting new paper ha just been published in Behavioural Ecology by David-Barret and Dunbar. I love reading cool papers like this, that are pretinent not just to the evolution of animal society but to that of our own. I am just going to paste the lay summary and the abstract below, with a link to the article:

Social elites can emerge naturally when interaction in networks is restricted (doi:10.1093/beheco/art085)

Lay Summary:
"The social world of many mammals and birds is highly structured, with interactions limited to a small number of socially or spatially close individuals, thus creating a natural layering to social networks. We use an agent based model to explore the social and fitness consequences of network structuring and show that stratification and elite formation emerge naturally under these circumstances, but at a cost of reducing the overall ecological efficiency of the system."

Abstract:
"Animal (and human) societies characterized by dominance hierarchies invariably suffer from inequality. The rise of inequality has 3 main prerequisites: 1) a group in which inequality can emerge, 2) the existence of differences in payoff, and 3) a mechanism that initiates, accumulates, and propagates the differences. Hitherto, 2 kinds of models have been used to study the processes involved. In winner–loser models of inequality (typical in zoology), the 3 elements are independent. In division-of-labor models of inequality, the first 2 elements are linked, whereas the third is independent. In this article, we propose a new model, that of synchronized group action, in which all 3 elements are linked. Under these conditions, agent-based simulations of communal action in multilayered communities naturally give rise to endogenous status, emergent social stratification, and the rise of elite cliques. We show that our 3 emergent social phenomena (status, stratification, and elite formation) react to natural variations in merit (the capacity to influence others’ decisions). We also show that the group-level efficiency and inequality consequences of these emergent phenomena define a space for social institutions that optimize efficiency gain in some fitness-related respect, while controlling the loss of efficiency and equality in other respects."

http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/10/21/beheco.art085.full.html?papetoc

This will probably be one of many of these types of blogs on the internet at the moment, but I feel very strongly about this and so want to put my views out there. I won’t paint myself as completely impartial, because I didn’t think that the cull should have been conducted in the first place: previous research (funded by the tax payer and costing millions of pounds) had shown that for a cull to be effective almost 90% of badgers needed to be culled. But they went ahead anyway (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-24594334).

My understanding of the aims of this cull is that they were trying to determine if shooting badgers was a humane and effective way of culling badgers. Therefore, for this study to show a positive result the marksmen should have been able to cull their quota in the six week period. Granting an extension would void the validity of the results. This has not happened, hence the extension of the cull, and therefore shows that this is not an effective method of controlling the spread of TB. In addition to this, the badger population is considerably lower than previously thought, why is this so? The marksmen have also taken to trapping and then shooting badgers, thus nullifying the aims of the study. And if you have a trapped badger can’t you just vaccinate it? And finally, to add fuel to this environmental fire, a recent study has come out in Current Biology (http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982213011238) has shown the mechanism by which disturbing badger groups exacerbates the spread of infectious diseases.

All in all, it seems that this whole exercise has been a farce from start to finish. Government policy should be influenced by two (not always agreeing) forces: popular opinion and scientific advice. It seems that this policy goes against both of those. Firstly, a small minority of the population, mainly in the agricultural industry, support this cull whilst the majority of the populous seem to strongly oppose it. Secondly, the majority of scientist called from the cull not to happen and have been vocal in criticism of its extension. There are two positives that I can see from all of this: firstly, the general populous seems to have engaged strongly with the discussions and scientists seem to have been very good in communicating their arguments. Secondly, we have been alerted to the fact that the badger population is potentially in decline and research can now be done to determine a) if this is the case and b) what is causing the decline.

I hope this has not been too ranty, I have tried to lay some arguments out in a brief way. I just hope that the government learns from this and in the future listens to the people and the scientist.

A new paper has just come out in TREE by Patrick Bateson and Kevin Laland. They seek to update Tinbergens four questions, that he proposed 50 years ago. These questions are for behaviour researchers and are as follows: what is it for? how did it develop? how did it evolve? and how does it work.

Here is the first paragraph:
"This year is the 50th anniversary of Tinbergen's (1963) article ‘On aims and methods of ethology’, where he first outlined the four ‘major problems of biology’. The classification of the four problems, or questions, is one of Tinbergen's most enduring legacies, and it remains as valuable today as 50 years ago in highlighting the value of a comprehensive, multifaceted understanding of a characteristic, with answers to each question providing complementary insights. Nonetheless, much has changed in the intervening years, and new data call for a more nuanced application of Tinbergen's framework. The anniversary would seem a suitable opportunity to reflect on the four questions and evaluate the scientific work that they encourage."

It is a good read and shows that old ideas are still important but that things obviously need a bit of updating.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016953471300236X

A new paper has just come out in Behavioural Ecology: Donaldson et al (In Press) Do paper wasps negotiate over helping effort? This paper uses two experiments to tease apart how Polistes dominulus responds to the provisioning behaviour of group members and the needs of dependent young. Firstly they manipulated the provisioning behaviour of foraging individuals, and secondly the manipulated the provisioning behaviour of individuals at the nest. The paper sets out to test McNamara et al (1999) and Johnstone's (2011) theories of negotiation in the context of a cooperative species.
The authors found that foundress wasps did not respond to the delivery rate of other group members but seemed to use the need of the dependent young as their main cue for provisioning. The authors speculate that this is likely due to the difficulty in individuals tracking the provisioning behaviour of other group member, as foundresses spend between 50-94% of their time off the nest foraging. Their results show that Polistes dominulus does not negotiate over care in a way predicted by either McNamara nor Johnstones models. By using offspring need they gain access to both current and historical levels of investment and this fits more with the recent work done by Lessells & McNamara (2012). This paper is a nice concise bit of science that aims and succeeds in testing a specific theoretical hypothesis.

link to paper: http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/10/03/beheco.art089.full.pdf?papetoc

refs:
Johnstone RA. 2011. Load lightening and negotiation over offspring care in cooperative breeders. Behav Ecol. 22:436–444.

Lessells CM, McNamara JM. 2012. Sexual conflict over parental investment in repeated bouts: negotiation reduces overall care. Proc R Soc B Biol Sci. 279:1506–1514.

McNamara JM, Gasson CE, Houston AI. 1999. Incorporating rules for responding into evolutionary games. Nature. 401:368–371.





   

After all of the many hours spent following birds in the Kalahari, sat in front a computer doing stats and reading many papers, the final version of my thesis has been given to the Doctoral Degrees Board at UCT and the PDF has been uploaded onto the Niven Library website by our amazing librarian Margaret Koopman. So this is a quick post to put a link to the Niven website and you can find my thesis by typing in "Thompson" and "babbler".

http://nivenlib.pfp.uct.ac.za/amlibweb/

I have now returned to Cape Town, after my final stint in the Kalahari. I return with three more publications than I left and a doctorate, not a bad haul. It was sad to say good bye to the KRR, a place that I have spent many years conducting research on meerkats, hornbills, drongos and of course pied babblers. I encourage any person reading this, who wants to get into field research, to go to the KRR. You can do this throught the Kalahari Meerkat Project (as a volunteer), or by contacting Mandy Ridley (babblers) or Tom Flower (drongos) to potentially be research assistants.
Here are the links to the three most recent babbler papers, the Functional Ecology paper is particularly interesting.

Thompson et al (In Press) Animal Behaviour http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347213003436
Ridley et al (In Press) Functional Ecology http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12153/abstract
Nelson-Flower et al (In Press) Proc R Soc http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1762/20130728.abstract

I am sad to leave the Babbler Project, but I hope these papers show the scope of research that is done and can be done on these brilliant birds. I hope the three current PhD students, Lizzie Wiley, Sabrina Engesser and James Westrip, can keep up the high quality research done at the project. I also hope that the birds have a successful breeding season!