Adaptation to monogamy influences parental care but not mating behavior in the burying beetle, <i>Nicrophorus vespilloides</i>

We used phenotypic manipulation experiments to test whether stridulation is necessary for effective parental care in two burying beetle species (Nicrophorus orbicollis and N. vespilloides). Our phenotypic manipulation rendered the both species silent; however, it had no detectable impact on parental performance in either species. Our results suggest that stridulation is unimportant for parental care in at least two Nicrophorus species, casting doubt upon a long‐assumed function of stridulation in the genus.

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“…A detailed description of the breeding conditions of this population is available in Schrader et al . (2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All individuals in these experiments were part of laboratory populations that were maintained under monogamy following the methods described in Schrader et al . (2020). Adult beetles were housed individually in containers filled with damp soil.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stridulation is unimportant for effective parental care in two species of burying beetle

Schrader

Galanek

2021

Ecological Entomology

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“…Extra-pair paternity (EPP) is suggested to be associated with the parental care in Remizidae (Ball et al 2017) and the amount of parental investment in animals in general (Kvarnemo 2018;Gao et al 2020;Schrader et al 2020). However, according to our microsatellite analyses, EPP is relatively low in Chinese penduline tits (around 6%,36 nests,198 nestlings,HW et al unpublished data), which is similar to Cape penduline tits Anthoscopus minutus (5.4%, Ball et al 2017) that obligate biparental care.…”

Section: Female Parental Care and Mating Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 50%

Males and females of a polygamous songbird respond differently to mating opportunities

Zheng

Komdeur

Székely

et al. 2021

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Parents are expected to make fine-tuned decisions by weighing the benefits of providing care to increase offspring survival against that of deserting to pursue future mating opportunities. A higher incentive for the rarer sex in the population indicates an impact of mating opportunities on parental care decisions. However, in a dynamic breeding system, deserting the offspring and searching for a new mate would influence mating opportunities for both sexes. Sex-specific costs and benefits are expected to influence males' and females' parenting strategies in different ways. Here, we investigated Chinese penduline tits, Remiz consobrinus, which exhibit flexible parental care strategies: uniparental care by the male or female, biparental care, and biparental desertion occur in the same population. We show that male penduline tits change their parental behavior over the breeding season; they desert clutches produced early in the season but care for the late season clutches. The change in male parenting behavior is consistent with the seasonal decline in mating opportunities. In contrast, parenting by females did not change over the breeding season, nor was it associated with seasonal variation in mate availability. Taken together, mating opportunities have different associations with parental behavior of male and female Chinese penduline tits. We recommend an inclusion of mating opportunities for both sexes simultaneously in order to understand one of the fundamental decisions in parental care evolutioncare or desert. Significance statementDivorce is a common feature of both human and nonhuman animal societies. Theoretical studies suggest that one of the drivers of divorce is enhanced mating opportunity, i.e., parents with higher mating opportunities are more likely to abandon their family than those with low mating opportunities. Here, we investigate the dynamics of parental behavior and mating opportunities in a wild population of a small songbird, the Chinese penduline tit Remiz consobrinus. This species exhibits one of the most diverse avian breeding systems wherein both uniparental (male or female) and biparental rearing can be seen in a single population. We show that male penduline tits abandon their offspring in response to enhanced mating opportunities while the female parental Communicated by M. Leonard

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“…Previous empirical work linking behavioral and life-history traits, such as reproductive strategy, fecundity, and body size with genetic diversity has suggested that these associations are ultimately mediated by changes in Ne ( Bharti et al, 2023 ; Chak et al, 2022 ; Romiguier et al, 2014 ; Settepani et al, 2017 ). However, our results cannot be explained by demography because populations were maintained at similar population sizes with no differences in fecundity ( Schrader, 2017 ) and no possibility of overlapping generations and/or changes in mating structure. Any small deviations in population size between care treatments were biased toward reducing genetic diversity in the Full Care populations—yet we found the opposite result.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Parental care shapes the evolution of molecular genetic variation

Mashoodh,

Trowsdale,

Manica

et al. 2023

Evolution Letters

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Cooperative social behaviors, such as parental care, have long been hypothesized to relax selection leading to the accumulation of genetic variation in populations. Although the idea has been discussed for decades, there has been relatively little experimental work to investigate how social behavior contributes to genetic variation in populations. Here, we investigate how parental care can shape molecular genetic variation in the subsocial insect, Nicrophorus vespilloides. Using whole-genome sequencing of populations that had evolved in the presence or absence of parental care for 30 generations, we show that parental care maintains levels of standing genetic variation. In contrast, under a harsh environment without care, strong directional selection caused a reduction in genetic variation. Furthermore, we show that adaptation to the loss of care is associated with genetic divergence between populations at loci related to stress, morphological development, and transcriptional regulation. These data reveal how social behavior is linked to the genetic processes that shape and maintain genetic diversity within populations, and provides rare empirical evidence for an old hypothesis.

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Adaptation to monogamy influences parental care but not mating behavior in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides

Cited by 5 publications

References 52 publications

Stridulation is unimportant for effective parental care in two species of burying beetle

Stridulation is unimportant for effective parental care in two species of burying beetle

Males and females of a polygamous songbird respond differently to mating opportunities

Parental care shapes the evolution of molecular genetic variation

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