ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
Kidnapping intergroup young: an alternative strategy to maintain group size in the group-living pied babbler (
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Group size affects spontaneous quantity discrimination performance in wild Western Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen dorsalis).Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Group augmentation underlies the evolution of complex sociality in the face of environmental instability.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Fitness consequences of outgroup conflict.eLife · 2022Review
- Intergroup conflict: origins, dynamics and consequences across taxa.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Kidnapping intergroup young: an alternative strategy to maintain group size in the group-living pied babbler (Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Correlates of individual participation in boundary patrols by male chimpanzees.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Helpers don't help when it's hot in a cooperatively breeding bird, the Southern Pied Babbler.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 8 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Both inter- and intragroup interactions can be important influences on behaviour, yet to date most research focuses on intragroup interactions. Here, we describe a hitherto relatively unknown behaviour that results from intergroup interaction in the cooperative breeding pied babbler: kidnapping. Kidnapping can result in the permanent removal of young from their natal group. Since raising young requires energetic investment and abductees are usually unrelated to their kidnappers, there appears no apparent evolutionary advantage to kidnapping. However, kidnapping may be beneficial in species where group size is a critically limiting factor (e.g. for reproductive success or territory defence). We found kidnapping was a highly predictable event in pied babblers: primarily groups that fail to raise their own young kidnap the young of others, and we show this to be the theoretical expectation in a model that predicts kidnapping to be facultative, only occurring in those cases where an additional group member has sufficient positive impact on group survival to compensate for the increase in reproductive competition. In babblers, groups that failed to raise young were also more likely to accept extragroup adults (hereafter rovers). Groups that fail to breed may either (i) kidnap intergroup young or (ii) accept rovers as an alternative strategy to maintain or increase group size. This article is part of the theme issue 'Intergroup conflict across taxa'.
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