Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Significance</jats:title>
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Cooperative breeding represents the pinnacle of vertebrate social evolution. Helpers in cooperatively breeding species are characterized by a life-long potential to reproduce. Therefore it has been predicted that cooperative breeders lack an early specialization into subordinate helpers and dominant breeders. In a 3-year life-history experiment, we manipulated the social and ecological environments jointly during the early postnatal period of a cooperatively breeding vertebrate, the “Princess cichlid”
<jats:italic>Neolamprologus pulcher</jats:italic>
. We found that individuals did specialize in distinct behavioral competences, which led to either delayed dispersal or early independent breeding. The divergence into different behavioral trajectories became apparent only by manipulating both early social and ecological experiences, highlighting the importance of multivariate influences on the development of social trajectories.
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