Offspring overcome poor parenting by being better parents

Abstract

Parental care is expected to buffer offspring against poor environments, yet such environments are common and parental care is both rare and incredibly variable. Moreover, parental care is complex, composed of multiple acts that together influence offspring fitness. We tested the hypothesis that parental care can act as a buffer because it is composed of multiple component behaviors that allow for robustness of post-embryonic development in response to changing environments. We test this hypothesis in the burying beetle Nicrophorus orbicollis, a species with complex parental care, by determining how this species responds to a poor developmental environment due to reduced parental care. We manipulated the duration of parental care received and measured both offspring and grandoffspring traits of males and females. As expected, reduced care affected key traits that influence fitness including offspring development time and mass. However, offspring that received reduced care responded by increasing uniparental care when they became parents and, in addition, shifted the type of parenting behavior used to transfer nutrients to offspring. Parents that received reduced care spent more time directly feeding offspring, while parents that received full care invested more time maintaining the food resource. As a result, both the number and mass of grandoffspring were unaffected by the developmental experience of their parent. Our results show that flexibility in the behaviors composing parental care can overcome poor developmental environments and limit negative parental effects to a single generation, suggesting that parental care can confer robustness both within and across generations.

Spatiotemporal variation in the competitive environment, with implications for how climate change may affect a species with parental care

“…We captured four teneral N. orbicollis adults on 28 June. Developmental periods for N. orbicollis in the laboratory are approximately 45 days from egg to adult (Potticary et al, in review ). Thus, these data suggest that the parents of these individuals laid eggs between mid‐ and late‐May.…”

“…Males may not be as attracted to carcasses as females as they can “call” for females off a carcass and so males may split their time between searching for carcasses and calling for females (Beeler et al, 1999 ; Eggert & Müller, 1997 ; Müller & Eggert, 1987 ). Moreover, our laboratory colony is derived from beetles at Whitehall Forest, and sex ratios of beetles that survive to adulthood are almost exactly 1:1 (Potticary et al, in review ). This provides indirect evidence that the discrepancy in captures between the sexes may reflect behavioral differences in response to variation in carrion, although future research would be needed to address this effect.…”

Nature Notes: Spatiotemporal variation in the competitive environment, with implications for how climate change may affect a species with parental care

“…We captured four teneral N. orbicollis adults on 28 June. Developmental periods for N. orbicollis in the laboratory are approximately 45 days from egg to adult (Potticary et al, in review). Thus, these data suggest that the parents of these individuals laid eggs between mid- to late-May.…”

“…Males may not be as attracted to carcasses as females as they can “call” for females off a carcass and so males may split their time between searching for carcasses and calling for females (Müller et al, 1987; Eggert & Müller, 1997; Beeler et al, 1999). Moreover, our laboratory colony is derived from beetles at Whitehall Forest, and sex ratios of beetles that survive to adulthood are almost exactly 1:1 (Potticary et al, in review). This provides indirect evidence that the discrepancy in captures between the sexes may reflect behavioral differences in response to variation in carrion, although future research would be needed to address this effect.…”