Offspring food allocation by parents and helpers in a cooperative mammal

In cooperatively breeding species, helpers and parents commonlyface two decisions when they find a food item: first, whetherto feed the item to a young group member or to eat it themselves;and second, which offspring to feed. Little is known aboutthe factors that influence these decisions in cooperative mammals,though optimal foraging theory provides a basis for a rangeof predictions. In this article we describe pup feeding behaviorby helpers and parents in a cooperative mongoose, the meerkat(Suricata suricatta). When meerkat pups begin accompanyingthe group, they beg food from older group members, who digup dispersed prey items. As predicted, the probability of aprey item being fed to a pup shows a positive relationshipwith prey size and a negative relationship with pup distance.Meerkats apparently follow a "feed the nearest pup rule" andare more likely to feed the nearest pup if it is hungry. Hungrierpups beg more and follow older group members more closely.Across all age categories, females feed pups more frequentlythan males, both in terms of the relative frequency of feeds,and the proportion of prey biomass found by each individualthat is fed to pups. Females also feed female pups significantlymore than male pups, while males feed pups of both sexes equally.These sex biases in feeding contributions may result from femalegroup members benefiting more than males from higher pup survival,and in particular higher female pup survival, because femalesare the philopatric sex.