Common ravens aggregate in large non-breeder flocks for roosting and foraging until they achieve the status of territorial breeders. When discovering food, they produce far-reaching yells or 'haa' calls, which attract conspecifics. Due to the high levels of fission-fusion dynamics in non-breeders' flocks, assemblies of feeding ravens were long thought to represent anonymous aggregations. Yet, n...

Longitudinal studies focusing on lifetime reproductive success (LRS) have been used to measure individual breeding performance and identify commonalities among successful breeders. By extending the focus to subsequent generations we identify a proportion of high-quality individuals that contribute disproportionately to the population over multiple generations. We used 23 years of yellow-eyed pe...

Understanding the response of species with differing life-history traits to habitat edges and habitat conversion helps predict their likelihood of persistence across changing landscape. In Brazil's Atlantic Forest, we evaluated frog richness and abundance by breeding guild at four distances from the edge of a reserve: i) 200 m inside the forest, ii) 50 m inside the forest, iii) at the forest ed...

Understanding the response of species with differing life-history traits to habitat edges and habitat conversion helps predict their likelihood of persistence across changing landscape. In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, we evaluated frog richness and abundance by breeding guild at four distances from the edge of a reserve: i) 200 m inside the forest, ii) 50 m inside the forest, iii) at the forest ed...

A trade-off between fecundity and life expectancy is fundamental to most theories on the evolution of life histories and ageing. In fact, sexual reproduction has been shown to reduce lifespan in a large number of species across all biological taxa [1]. The only exception known thus far are eusocial hymenopterans, with reproducing queens usually living much longer than the sterile workers [2]. H...

Offspring from elderly parents often have lower survival due to parental senescence. In cooperatively breeding species, where offspring care is shared between breeders and helpers, the alloparental provided by helpers predicted mitigate impact of senescence on provisioning and, subsequently, survival. We test this prediction using data a long-term study Seychelles warblers (Acrocephalus sechell...

The objectives of this study were to 1) evaluate the genetic diversity of Navajo-Churro sheep using pedigree information; 2) examine the distribution of the Navajo-Churro population; and 3) evaluate the effect of breeder dynamics on genetic conservation of the breed. Pedigree data and breeder information (city and state) were obtained from the Navajo-Churro Sheep Breed Association. Inbreeding c...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB). Seventy-six breeders were randomly selected from among 95 breeders who were working at the Seed and Plant Improvement Institute, Karaj, Iran. Data were collected by a questionnaire as the main data collection instrument. The face and content validity of the questionnaire was appr...

The purpose of this study is to identify pathological findings among pigeon breeders in the Salonica area. Fifty-four volunteer breeders with varying intensity of contact with pigeons participated in the study. All the breeders, after filling in a questionnaire that included questions about the existence of conjunctivitis, rhinitis, chronic cough and sputum, were subjected to clinical examinati...

BACKGROUND Recently, much attention has been paid to the role of cooperative breeding in the evolution of behavior. In many measures, cooperative breeders are more prosocial than non-cooperatively breeding species, including being more likely to actively share food. This is hypothesized to be due to selective pressures specific to the interdependency characteristic of cooperatively breeding spe...