The evolution of social life in family groups

Abstract

Family life forms an integral part of the life-history of species across the animal kingdom, and plays a crucial role in the evolution of animal sociality. Our current understanding of family life, however, is almost exclusively based on studies that (i) focus on parental care and associated family interactions (such as those arising from sibling rivalry and parent-offspring conflict), and (ii) investigate these phenomena in the advanced family systems of mammals, birds, and eusocial insects. Here, we argue that these historical biases have fostered the neglect of key processes shaping social life in ancestral family systems, and thus profoundly hamper our understanding of the (early) evolution of family life. Based on a comprehensive survey of the literature, we first illustrate that the strong focus on parental care in advanced social systems has deflected scrutiny of other important social processes such as sibling cooperation, parent-offspring competition and offspring assistance. We then show that accounting for these neglected processes - and their changing role in the course of evolution - could profoundly change our understanding of the evolutionary origin and subsequent consolidation of family life. Finally, we outline how this diachronic perspective on the evolution of family living could provide novel insights into general processes driving social evolution. Overall, we infer that the explicit consideration of thus far neglected facets of family life, together with their study across the whole diversity of family systems, are crucial to advance our understanding of the processes that shape the evolution of social life.