Adaptive responses and disruptive effects: how major wildfire influences kinship-based social interactions in a forest marsupial

Environmental disturbance is predicted to play a key role in the evolution of animal social behaviour. This is because disturbance affects key factors underlying social systems, such as demography, resource availability and genetic structure. However, because natural disturbances are unpredictable there is little information on their effects on social behaviour in wild populations. Here, we investigated how a major wildfire affected cooperation (sharing of hollow trees) by a hollow-dependent marsupial. We based two alternative social predictions on the impacts of fire on population density, genetic structure and resources. We predicted an adaptive social response from previous work showing that kin selection in den-sharing develops as competition for den resources increases. Thus, kin selection should occur in burnt areas because the fire caused the loss of 80% of hollow-bearing trees, but no detectable mortality. Alternatively, fire may have a disruptive social effect, whereby post-fir...环境扰动被认为在动物社会行为的演化中发挥关键作用。这是因为扰动会影响社会系统的核心驱动因素，包括种群统计学、资源可获得性以及遗传结构。然而，由于自然扰动具有不可预测性，目前关于其对野生种群社会行为影响的研究资料十分有限。本研究探讨了一场大型野火如何影响依赖树洞的有袋类动物的合作行为（即共享树洞）。我们基于野火对种群密度、遗传结构和资源的影响，提出了两种对立的社会行为预测假说。此前研究表明，随着巢穴资源竞争加剧，共享巢穴的亲缘选择效应会增强，据此我们预测野火会引发适应性的社会行为响应。因此，在过火区域应该会出现亲缘选择现象：因为这场野火导致80%的存有树洞的树木死亡，但未检测到动物个体的死亡。反之，野火也可能对社会行为产生干扰效应，即火灾后……