The strong coevolutionary arms race between social parasites and their hosts has dramatically shaped the life-history traits of both parties. One of the main strategies exhibited by hosts in response to parasitism is reproduction by host workers. We lack a mechanistic understanding of how these defence strategies unfold and, specifically, whether hosts exhibit more subtle strategies to reduce the costs of parasitism from the o...

Cooperative breeding decreases the direct reproductive output of subordinate individuals, but cooperation can be evolutionarily favored when there are challenges or constraints to breeding independently. Environmental factors, including temperature, precipitation, latitude, high seasonality, and environmental harshness have been hypothesized to correlate with the presence of cooperative breeding. However, to test the relations...