Mathilde Lalot, Aude Bourgeois, Michel Saint Jalme, Dalila Bovet
{"title":"Family first! Influence of parental investment in Guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) prosocial choices","authors":"Mathilde Lalot, Aude Bourgeois, Michel Saint Jalme, Dalila Bovet","doi":"10.1007/s10071-023-01813-x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Literature often assumed that prosocial behaviours (behaviours that benefit others with or without a cost for the actor) would have evolved many species to improve the effectiveness of parental care (Decety and Cowell 2014). While this hypothesis is rarely questioned at a phylogenetic scale, it was never tested at an individual scale to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, we chose to study the impact of effective parental care on prosociality by comparing the prosocial tendencies of Guinea pigs before mating, during mating and after parturition. We conducted Prosocial Choice Tests on three groups of Guinea pigs (males, multiparous females, and nulliparous females). Subjects had to choose between three options: a prosocial option (subject and recipient being rewarded), a selfish option (only subject was rewarded), and a null option (no reward). Our results showed high prosociality towards their mating partner and their young both in male and in female subjects. Males became selfish towards other males after parturition. Among other interesting results, we found a direct reciprocity phenomenon. We also highlighted an ability in our subjects to consider both the identity and relationship shared with the recipient, such as tolerance (enhancing prosociality), dominance rank (being tested with a dominant recipient increasing selfish responses), and its behaviour (begging calls eliciting prosociality, while threatening ones decreasing it), to choose an option. These findings suggested that prosociality could be modulated by many factors and that the constraints and stakes induced by breeding would highly influence prosocial strategies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"26 5","pages":"1713 - 1732"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Animal Cognition","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-023-01813-x","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Literature often assumed that prosocial behaviours (behaviours that benefit others with or without a cost for the actor) would have evolved many species to improve the effectiveness of parental care (Decety and Cowell 2014). While this hypothesis is rarely questioned at a phylogenetic scale, it was never tested at an individual scale to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, we chose to study the impact of effective parental care on prosociality by comparing the prosocial tendencies of Guinea pigs before mating, during mating and after parturition. We conducted Prosocial Choice Tests on three groups of Guinea pigs (males, multiparous females, and nulliparous females). Subjects had to choose between three options: a prosocial option (subject and recipient being rewarded), a selfish option (only subject was rewarded), and a null option (no reward). Our results showed high prosociality towards their mating partner and their young both in male and in female subjects. Males became selfish towards other males after parturition. Among other interesting results, we found a direct reciprocity phenomenon. We also highlighted an ability in our subjects to consider both the identity and relationship shared with the recipient, such as tolerance (enhancing prosociality), dominance rank (being tested with a dominant recipient increasing selfish responses), and its behaviour (begging calls eliciting prosociality, while threatening ones decreasing it), to choose an option. These findings suggested that prosociality could be modulated by many factors and that the constraints and stakes induced by breeding would highly influence prosocial strategies.
期刊介绍:
Animal Cognition is an interdisciplinary journal offering current research from many disciplines (ethology, behavioral ecology, animal behavior and learning, cognitive sciences, comparative psychology and evolutionary psychology) on all aspects of animal (and human) cognition in an evolutionary framework.
Animal Cognition publishes original empirical and theoretical work, reviews, methods papers, short communications and correspondence on the mechanisms and evolution of biologically rooted cognitive-intellectual structures.
The journal explores animal time perception and use; causality detection; innate reaction patterns and innate bases of learning; numerical competence and frequency expectancies; symbol use; communication; problem solving, animal thinking and use of tools, and the modularity of the mind.