Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Weidt A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3893474 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Weidt Andrea A Lindholm Anna K AK König Barbara B
Die Naturwissenschaften 20140104 1
Communal nursing, the provision of milk to non-offspring, has been argued to be a non-adaptive by-product of group living. We used 2 years of field data from a wild house mouse population to investigate this question. Communal nursing never occurred among females that previously lacked overlap in nest box use. Females nursed communally in only 33% of cases in which there was a communal nursing partner available from the same social group. Solitarily nursing females were not socially isolated in ...[more]