The piglet case: commensalism as a distinct category of intraspecific animal relationships
Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Animal Behavior, Ecology, Zoology
- Keywords
- commensalism, intraspecific animal relationship, pig, suckling behaviour, siblings
- Copyright
- © 2017 Skok
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. The piglet case: commensalism as a distinct category of intraspecific animal relationships. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2563v3 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2563v3
Abstract
1. Interspecific relationships, termed symbiosis, are considered very diverse, while intraspecific relationships have just two categories.
2. The present classification fails to define all interactions among members of the same species, as demonstrated by observations of suckling behaviour in pigs.
3. Supporting latest findings on the suckling behaviour of piglets, I propose an extension of the classification for existing intraspecific animal relationships by adding a new distinct category: commensalism.
Author Comment
Version 3: In this version only a bibliographic details for Skok (2016) have been supplemented.