For Canada jays, sibling rivalry can be deadly as winner takes all
Retrieved on:
Monday, May 15, 2023
Sometimes death can occur as a result of this competition, but siblicide almost always occurs when young are still in the nest.
Key Points:
- Sometimes death can occur as a result of this competition, but siblicide almost always occurs when young are still in the nest.
- In many species, despite sibling conflicts, juveniles have the choice to stay within the home territory or leave and seek out a new home.
- This study on sibling conflict in wild animals is the first to measure the cost of kicking out siblings.
Canada jay behaviour
- To do this, we examined the survival and lifetime reproductive success of all known dominant juveniles and ejectees.
- Because Canada jays can live up to 17 years, it took over five decades to collect lifetime data on a sufficient number of individuals in the population.
- Canada jays are full-time residents of North Americas’s boreal forests, and they rely on stored food items to survive through the winter.
Winner takes all
- And while the dominant juvenile reaps those benefits, ejectees are sentenced to a risky first year of life, where they are less likely to survive.
- It is not necessarily a beneficial thing to kill or expel a sibling, even if the ability is there.
- Siblings share genes, so harming a sibling has a negative effect on the genetic success of an individual’s lineage.
Sibling behaviour and survival
- This trend is due to warming temperatures and higher frequencies of freeze-thaw events that spoil the highly perishable food that jays store for winter.
- Our study is important for the field of behavioural ecology, and it provides novel insights into the evolutionary drivers of sibling conflicts.