■裸鼠(Heterocephalusglaber)是地球上最具社会性的哺乳动物之一,生活在多达300个人的社会群体中,其中包含一个生殖雌性和三个生殖雄性。他们复杂的社会制度的一个关键方面是劳动分工,允许非育种者形成有效的劳动力。基于年龄或体重的多元分析被广泛引用为劳动力如何分配的解释,但是支持这些假设的证据是模棱两可的。
■为了评估个人工作行为在多大程度上由性别决定,年龄,体重和社会地位,我们研究了来自8个圈养殖民地的103只动物的行为。我们进行了局部采样并运行了混合效应模型,以评估在每个人的六个十分钟观察期中,哪些因素解释了工作行为的变化。
■与广泛持有的信念相反,我们发现工作行为并没有随着体重线性下降,尽管多项式回归表明年轻和中型个体工作最频繁,而高级个人工作时间最短。殖民地之间的工作行为及其与个人特征的关系也有所不同。
■虽然基于年龄或大小的多元性可能会对工作行为产生一些影响,我们认为,个人和群体的其他特征也很重要。特别是,个体的相互作用,必须考虑社会和环境因素,以了解分工的出现和有效性,这对许多社会有机体至关重要。
UNASSIGNED: The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is among the most social mammals on the planet, living in eusocial groups of up to 300 individuals that contain a single reproductive female and up to three reproductive males. A critical aspect of their complex social system is the division of labour that allows non-breeders to form an effective workforce. Age- or weight-based polyethisms are widely cited as explanations for how labour is divided, but evidence in support of these hypotheses has been equivocal.
UNASSIGNED: To assess the extent to which individual working behaviour is determined by sex, age, weight and social rank, we studied the behaviours of 103 animals from eight captive colonies. We performed focal sampling and ran mixed-effects models to assess which factors explained variation in working behaviour during six ten-minute observation periods per individual.
UNASSIGNED: Contrary to widely-held beliefs, we found that working behaviour did not decrease linearly with weight, although polynomial regressions indicated younger and medium-sized individuals worked most frequently, while high-ranking individuals worked for the shortest periods of time. Working behaviour and its relationship with individual characteristics also varied between colonies.
UNASSIGNED: While age- or size-based polyethisms may have some influence on working behaviour, we argue that other characteristics of the individual and colony are also important. In particular, the interactions of individual, social and environmental factors must be considered in order to understand the emergence and effectiveness of the division of labour that is so critical to many social organisms.