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News From the Field

Savanna Habitat Drives Birds, and Perhaps Others, to Cooperative Breeding


August 16, 2007

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Birds of a feather flock together, but for African starlings, this is true primarily in savannas, where cooperation improves survival in the unpredictable habitat, according to UC-Berkeley and Cornell researchers. Cooperative breeding, where helpers forego breeding to gather food for the offspring of other group members, seems to be a successful survival strategy with the highly variable rainfall of the savanna. Savanna habitats may have led to cooperative social behavior in other species also.Full Story

Source
University of California - Berkeley

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