Post-allogrooming reductions in self-directed behaviour are affected by role and status in the green woodhoopoe

Allogrooming occurs in a wide range of species and can serve both hygienic and social functions. While the latter have long been thought to be underpinned by reductions in tension for recipients, recent work has suggested that donors may also benefit in this way. Here, I show that, in cooperatively breeding green woodhoopoes Phoeniculus purpureus, involvement in allogrooming is followed by a reduction in self-grooming by both recipients and donors, but that the former exhibit a greater decrease. Moreover, I demonstrate for the first time that the dominance status of the allogrooming participant is important, with subordinate group members reducing subsequent self-grooming to a greater extent than the dominant pair. If avian self-directed behaviour reflects current distress levels in the same way as found in various primates, my results would indicate that allogrooming benefits are not confined to mammals, and would have important implications both for accurate assessments of the true costs and benefits of affiliative behaviour and for our understanding of the evolution of sociality.