One of the papers from Enrico Sorato’s PhD work was published today in the Journal of Animal Ecology. In the paper, we showed that in the chestnut-crowned babbler,

individuals suffer a cost of hanging around with their group mates, even if they are not actively involved in feeding offspring. That’s because over the course of a breeding attempt the foragers have to move further into the territory away from the nest to find enough food, incurring greater costs of moving and foraging. This cost, which has not been considered before may help to understand individual decisions about when to stay and when to leave a social group, and will contribute to the optimal group size. The paper is entitled The price of associating with breeders in the cooperatively breeding chestnut-crowned babbler: foraging constraints, survival and sociality, and can be found here.