Abstract
Helping, defined here as the activity of feeding young by birds that are not of parent-offspring relatedness, is generally perceived as a unique behavior that has evolved only in individuals that live in communally breeding groups. Under the assumption that helping has evolved by the process of natural selection, current research is directed primarily at investigating the functional adaptiveness of helping behavior, especially in terms of its consequence on direct or indirect fitness. We argue that this solely functional approach restricts the perception of behavior associated with communal breeders as well as our understanding of how such behavior persists within certain populations.
Alternatively, we define provisioning behavior as an activity where a bird feeds a dependent or semidependent individual, a behavior usually seen in the context of parents feeding their own young. However, a review of the endocrinology literature and captivity studies reveals that hormonal or breeding condition is not a necessary prerequisite for expressing provisioning behavior, but exposure to a proper stimulus is. Thus, when juveniles do not disperse immediately from their natal territories, a situation which occurs regularly in communal breeders, the opportunity exists for them to encounter and interact with begging offspring. Furthermore, provisioning behavior appears to occur regardless of genetic relationships. We therefore advocate a complete departure from “increased fitness”-type arguments for explaining the occurrence of so-called helping behavior. It is proposed that the feeding of nestlings in communal breeders is maintained by the same stimulus-response mechanism that results in parents feeding their own young or host species feeding parasitic young, a situation where there is no reasonable adaptive explanation.
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Jamieson, I.G., Craig, J.L. (1987). Critique of Helping Behavior in Birds: A Departure from Functional Explanations. In: Bateson, P.P.G., Klopfer, P.H. (eds) Perspectives in Ethology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1815-6_3
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