T. Ratz, P. Smiseth. 2018. Flexible parents: joint effects of handicapping and brood size manipulation...
Tom Ratz, Per T. Smiseth. 2018.
Flexible parents: joint effects of handicapping and brood size manipulation on female parental care in Nicrophorus vespilloides.
Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2018, February 22. 11 pp.
doi:10.1111/jeb.13254
Файл PDF: ratz_et_al-2017-journal_of_evolutionary_biology.pdf
Abstract
Parental care is highly variable, reflecting that parents make flexible
decisions in response to variation in the cost of care to themselves and the
benefit to their offspring. Much of the evidence that parents respond to such
variation derives from handicapping and brood size manipulations, the separate
effects of which are well understood. However, little is known about their joint
effects. Here we fill this gap by conducting a joint handicapping and brood size
manipulation in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. We handicapped half
of the females by attaching a lead weight to their pronotum, leaving the
remaining females as controls. We also manipulated brood size by providing each
female with 5, 20 or 40 larvae. In contrast to what we predicted, handicapped
females spent more time provisioning food than controls. We also found that
handicapped females spent more time consuming carrion. Furthermore, handicapped
females spent a similar amount of time consuming carrion regardless of brood
size, while controls spent more time consuming carrion as brood increased.
Females spent more time provisioning food towards larger broods, and females
were more likely to engage in carrion consumption when caring for larger brood.
We conclude that females respond to both handicapping and brood size
manipulations, but these responses are largely independent of each other.
Overall, our results suggest that handicapping might lead to a higher investment
into current reproduction, and that it might be associated with compensatory
responses that negate the detrimental impact of higher cost of care in
handicapped parents. This article is protected by copyright. All rights
reserved.