Short- and Long-Term Social Effects of Parental Sex Roles in Zebra Finches

Abstract

Parental care is among the most widespread and variable behavioral traits between and within species, associated often both with large fitness costs and benefits. Despite its fitness consequences and evolutionary significance, we know very little about the ontogeny of this behavior, specifically, whether and how social experiences from parents contribute to the development of parental care. Here we used a split-family experimental design to produce uniparentally raised zebra finch nestlings that were provisioned either only by their mother or their father from shortly after hatching until independence. We investigated whether zebra finch nestlings pay attention to who takes care of them (short-term social effects) and whether parental sex roles, i.e., how much each parent provides to offspring, are socially learned and how these early social experiences influence negotiation rules of parental effort as adults (long-term social effects). We found pronounced short-term effects: uniparentally raised young socialized more with their "caring" than with their "non-caring" parent in a two-way choice test and begged more for food from them. When paired as adults based on their caring parent, some combinations of these uniparentally raised finches did not coordinate normally during incubation as first-time parents. By nestling provisioning (and their second breeding) even these pairs assumed normal distribution of parental effort and we therefore conclude that early social experiences influence parental sex roles and coordination, but these can be overridden by own social experiences with the mate when starting to breed.

Genetic and Social Transmission of Parental Sex Roles in Zebra Finch Families

“…The behavioural pattern experienced from parents, however, appeared to have only a temporal effect, because our analysis of the next reproductive stage, post-hatching period, revealed brooding rate to be influenced by the genetic, rather than the social father's behaviour. Our previous experiment, in which we applied a split-family experimental design to create uniparentally raised young, resulted in very similar transitional social effects (Pogany et al, 2019). Both female-only and male-only cared zebra finches showed different parental sex role division when incubating during their first breeding based on their social experiences with each of their parents.…”

“…Here we aim at filling a gap by experimentally investigating the potentially determining social effects of parenting. Previous studies revealed social interactions to have prominent influence on sex role-related behaviours in the socially monogamous, biparental zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), such as on mating preferences, nest building and parental care (Immelmann, 1972;Jones et al, 1996;Swaddle et al, 2005;Guillette et al, 2016;Katsis et al, 2018;Pogany et al, 2019). Based on these studies, we chose this small passerine as our model species, and applied a full cross-fostering design to disentangle experimentally genetic and social effects deriving from the parents.…”

The neurogenetic background of parental care

“…Consequently, theoretical models and empirical data suggest sharing of parental effort is rarely 50-50%. Males and females invest in parental care, but their investment is not independent of that of their mate [23], [36]. Altered parental behaviour of one sex can influence that of the other over evolutionary time, which then results in an ongoing coevolution and transformation between different forms of parental care.…”

“…Altered parental behaviour of one sex can influence that of the other over evolutionary time, which then results in an ongoing coevolution and transformation between different forms of parental care. The response to the mate's effort might also happen dynamically in real time, as postulated by the negotiation models of parental effort [36], [37]. Extra pair copulations and desertion may further contribute and ultimately influence the evolution of parental strategies [25].…”

Disentangling genetic, plastic and social learning drivers of sex-specific foraging behaviour in Trinidadian guppies ( Poecilia reticulata )

“…Social learning can lead to the rapid spread of adaptive behaviours in a population, facilitating responses to environmental changes. It has also been shown to be sex-specific (reviewed in [19]); for example, Pogány et al [20] found that male zebra finches learn more care behaviours than do females when reared with conspecifics.…”