The impacts that helpers have on offspring in cooperative breeding systems depend on
parental responses to help. However, the vast majority of investigations into parental …

Sexual conflict occurs in biparental species because working together provides shared
benefits while incurring individual costs. In birds, coordination of provisioning visits via turn …

Meteorological stressors (eg, temperature and rain shortage) constrain brood provisioning in
some bird species, but the consequences on reproductive success have been rarely …

Several hypotheses propose that parent birds might synchronize their visits to the nest, but
field studies have historically overlooked the temporal pattern of parental care. Either …

Phenotypic plasticity is hypothesized to facilitate adaptive responses to challenging
conditions, such as those resulting from climate change. However, tests of the key …

Cooperatively breeding vertebrates are common in unpredictable environments where the
costs and benefits of providing offspring care fluctuate temporally. To balance these fitness …

Telomeres are chromosomal elements that protect and maintain genes as DNA replicates in
many organisms. As individuals age and DNA replicates, telomeres often shorten; thus …

Ecological differences are instrumental to the evolution of cooperative breeding, because
they mean that the costs and benefits of forming a group and sharing reproduction differ …

Despite the predation risk, many birds emit conspicuous vocalisations at the nest. Five
general hypotheses can explain nest-calling: stimulating nestling begging, conditioning …