IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v25y2014i1p216-222..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reciprocity and conditional cooperation between great tit parents

Author

Listed:
  • Rufus A. Johnstone
  • Andrea Manica
  • Annette L. Fayet
  • Mary Caswell Stoddard
  • Miguel A. Rodriguez-Gironés
  • Camilla A. Hinde

Abstract

When individuals invest in a common good, an efficient outcome is hard to achieve, because each can free ride on others’ efforts. This problem can lead parents that raise their young together to reduce their investment in care, with negative consequences for offspring. Here, we present a mathematical model to show that a strategy of conditional cooperation, in which parents take turns feeding their young, can help to resolve this problem. To test this idea, we studied the behavior of great tit parents raising chicks together. We found that parents alternated visits to the nest more than would be expected by chance, speeding up their feeding rate after their partner had visited the chicks, but slowing down again once they had visited in turn. This effect was not mediated by visit-to-visit changes in offspring begging intensity, although females (but not males) were influenced by mean begging levels across broods. We conclude that conflict over parental investment in this species is partly ameliorated by a simple form of reciprocity.

Suggested Citation

  • Rufus A. Johnstone & Andrea Manica & Annette L. Fayet & Mary Caswell Stoddard & Miguel A. Rodriguez-Gironés & Camilla A. Hinde, 2014. "Reciprocity and conditional cooperation between great tit parents," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 25(1), pages 216-222.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:25:y:2014:i:1:p:216-222.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/art109
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    2. Claudia Keser & Frans Van Winden, 2000. "Conditional Cooperation and Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 102(1), pages 23-39, March.
    3. C.A. Hinde, 2006. "Negotiation over offspring care?--a positive response to partner-provisioning rate in great tits," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 17(1), pages 6-12, January.
    4. Tim Clutton-Brock, 2009. "Cooperation between non-kin in animal societies," Nature, Nature, vol. 462(7269), pages 51-57, November.
    5. Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, 2004. "Social Comparisons and Pro-social Behavior: Testing "Conditional Cooperation" in a Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1717-1722, December.
    6. Rufus A. Johnstone, 2011. "Load lightening and negotiation over offspring care in cooperative breeders," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 22(2), pages 436-444.
    7. John M. McNamara & Alasdair I. Houston & Zolta´n Barta & Jose´-Luis Osorno, 2003. "Should young ever be better off with one parent than with two?," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 14(3), pages 301-310, May.
    8. Rufus A. Johnstone & Camilla A. Hinde, 2006. "Negotiation over offspring care--how should parents respond to each other's efforts?," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 17(5), pages 818-827, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tina A Barbasch & Rebecca Branconi & Robin Francis & Madison Pacaro & Maya Srinivasan & Geoffrey P Jones & Peter M Buston, 2021. "Negotiations over parental care: a test of alternative hypotheses in the clown anemonefish," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 32(6), pages 1256-1265.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alpízar, Francisco & Martinsson, Peter, 2010. "Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Tell Me Who to Follow! - Field Experiment Evidence on Voluntary Donations," Working Papers in Economics 452, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    2. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    3. Drouvelis, Michalis & Marx, Benjamin M., 2022. "Can charitable appeals identify and exploit belief heterogeneity?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 631-649.
    4. Dong, Bin & Dulleck, Uwe & Torgler, Benno, 2012. "Conditional corruption," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 609-627.
    5. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth, 2013. "Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    6. Vyrastekova, Jana & Funaki, Yukihiko, 2018. "Cooperation in a sequential dilemma game: How much transparency is good for cooperation?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 88-95.
    7. Simon Gaechter, 2006. "Conditional cooperation: Behavioral regularities from the lab and the field and their policy implications," Discussion Papers 2006-03, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    8. Richter, Andries & Grasman, Johan, 2013. "The transmission of sustainable harvesting norms when agents are conditionally cooperative," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 202-209.
    9. Raúl López-Pérez & Aldo Ramírez-Almudio, 2020. "Why people give to their governments: The role of outcome-oriented norms," Working Papers 2007, Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos (IPP), CSIC.
    10. Antoni Bosch-Domènech & Joaquim Silvestre, 2017. "The role of frames, numbers and risk in the frequency of cooperation," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 64(3), pages 245-267, September.
    11. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2015. "Lying in public good games with and without punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-02, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    12. Raphaële Préget & Phu Nguyen-Van & Marc Willinger, 2016. "Who are the voluntary leaders? Experimental evidence from a sequential contribution game," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 81(4), pages 581-599, November.
    13. Guttman, Joel M., 2013. "On the evolution of conditional cooperation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 15-34.
    14. Kim, Jeongbin & Putterman, Louis & Zhang, Xinyi, 2022. "Trust, Beliefs and Cooperation: Excavating a Foundation of Strong Economies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    15. Simon Gaechter & Daniele Nosenzo & Elke Renner & Martin Sefton, 2009. "Sequential versus simultaneous contributions to public goods: Experimental evidence," Discussion Papers 2009-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    16. Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2006. "Cost Benefit Rules when Nature Counts," Working Papers in Economics 198, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 09 May 2006.
    17. Gächter, Simon & Renner, Elke, 2018. "Leaders as role models and ‘belief managers’ in social dilemmas," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 321-334.
    18. Kurt A. Ackermann & Ryan O. Murphy, 2019. "Explaining Cooperative Behavior in Public Goods Games: How Preferences and Beliefs Affect Contribution Levels," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-34, March.
    19. Josephine G. Gatua, 2021. "Information and cooperation in preventive health behavior: The case of bed net use in rural Kenya," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(9), pages 2124-2143, September.
    20. Zafar, Basit, 2011. "An experimental investigation of why individuals conform," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 774-798, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:25:y:2014:i:1:p:216-222.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.