Pregnancy reduces concurrent pup care behaviour in meerkats, generating differences between dominant and subordinate females

In some mammals, and particularly in cooperative breeding ones, successive bouts of reproduction can overlap so that a female is often pregnant while still nurturing dependent young from her previous litter. Such an overlap requires females to divide their energetic budget between two reproductive activities, and pregnancy costs would consequently be expected to reduce investment in concurrent offspring care. However, explicit evidence for such reductions is scarce, and the potential effects they may have on work division in cooperative breeders have not been explored.
Using 25 years of data on reproduction and cooperative behaviour in wild Kalahari meerkats, supplemented with field experiments, we investigated whether pregnancy reduces contributions to cooperative pup care behaviours, including babysitting, provisioning, and raised guarding. We also explored whether pregnancy, which is more frequent in dominants than subordinates, could account for the reduced contributions of dominant..., ,