Abstract
If individuals help more those who have previously helped them, stable
cooperation may ensue through alternation of roles between donors and
recipients. Allogrooming, which is costly to donors and beneficial to
recipients, is often exchanged between social partners. Arguably,
allogrooming and allopreening are the most frequently exchanged social
services and have been used as a standard model of reciprocal
cooperation. However, evidence for the application of reciprocity rules
among social partners allogrooming each other hitherto is merely
correlational. Here, we tested whether female Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus)
apply the decision rule characterising direct reciprocity: help someone
who has helped you before, by experimentally manipulating both the need
for allogrooming and the behavioural response. Furthermore, we checked
whether trading of grooming services is influenced by the rank of the
social partner. We show that rats groom social partners reciprocally and
prefer to do so up the hierarchy, i.e. they groom dominant partners
more often than subordinates, while reciprocating with both. This
provides experimental evidence that animals render a costly social
service by applying reciprocity decision rules when showing a natural
hygienic behaviour. The fact that allogrooming is more readily shown up
the hierarchy may suggest an appeasing function.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 4010 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Scientific Reports |
Volume | 7 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 21 Jun 2017 |
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Experimental evidence for reciprocity in allogrooming among wild-type Norway rats (dataset)
Schweinfurth, M. K. (Creator), Stieger, B. (Creator) & Taborsky, M. (Creator), University of St Andrews, 18 May 2020
DOI: 10.17630/db625995-e7fa-4aa5-b014-4f63764481ce
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