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Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) do not specialise on cooperative tasks

Susanne Siegmann, Romana Feitsch, Daniel W. Hart, Nigel C. Bennett, Dustin J. Penn, View ORCID ProfileMarkus Zöttl
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.22.436002
Susanne Siegmann
1Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria
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Romana Feitsch
1Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria
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Daniel W. Hart
2Mammal Research Institute, Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
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Nigel C. Bennett
2Mammal Research Institute, Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
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Dustin J. Penn
1Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria
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Markus Zöttl
3Ecology and Evolution in Microbial Model Systems, EEMiS, Department of Biology and Environmental Science, Linnaeus University, SE-391 82 Kalmar, Sweden
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  • ORCID record for Markus Zöttl
  • For correspondence: markus.zottl@lnu.se
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Abstract

It has been proposed that naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) societies resemble those of eusocial insects by showing a division of labour among non-breeding individuals. Earlier studies suggested that non-breeders belong to distinct castes that specialise permanently or temporarily on specific cooperative tasks. In contrast, recent research on naked mole-rats has shown that behavioural phenotypes are continuously distributed across non-breeders and that mole-rats exhibit considerable behavioural plasticity suggesting that individuals may not specialise permanently on work tasks. However, it is currently unclear whether individuals specialise temporarily and whether there is a sex bias in cooperative behaviour among non-breeders. Here we show that non-breeding individuals vary in overall cooperative investment, but do not specialise on specific work tasks. Within individuals, investment into specific cooperative tasks such as nest building, food carrying and burrowing are positively correlated, and there is no evidence that individuals show trade-offs between these cooperative behaviours. Non-breeding males and females do not differ in their investment in cooperative behaviours and show broadly similar age and body mass related differences in cooperative behaviours. Our results suggest that non-breeding naked mole-rats vary in their overall contribution to cooperative behaviours and that some of this variation may be explained by differences in age and body mass. Our data provide no evidence for temporary specialisation, as found among some eusocial insects, and suggests that the behavioural organisation of naked mole-rats resembles that of other cooperatively breeding vertebrates more than that of eusocial insect species.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted March 22, 2021.
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Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) do not specialise on cooperative tasks
Susanne Siegmann, Romana Feitsch, Daniel W. Hart, Nigel C. Bennett, Dustin J. Penn, Markus Zöttl
bioRxiv 2021.03.22.436002; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.22.436002
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Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) do not specialise on cooperative tasks
Susanne Siegmann, Romana Feitsch, Daniel W. Hart, Nigel C. Bennett, Dustin J. Penn, Markus Zöttl
bioRxiv 2021.03.22.436002; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.22.436002

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