Should advertising parental care be honest?

Kokko, Hanna

doi:10.1098/rspb.1998.0515

Cited by 178 publications

(157 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…Kokko [61] presents an instructive model of parental care and attractiveness. Males differ in quality and each allocates resources to advertising to females, care and self-maintenance in the way that maximizes fitness.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although Kokko's analysis [61] is a major contribution to our understanding of the relationships between attractiveness and effort, it has some limitations in terms of the interactions that we have identified as being required for a fully consistent model. In particular, the interaction between the male and the female is not considered, so the model cannot predict how the parental investment of a female depends on the attractiveness of her mate.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Conflict between parents over care

Houston

Székely

McNamara

2005

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

349

316

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Conflict between parents over care of young arises when the young benefit from the effort of both parents, but each parent suffers a reduction in future reproductive success as a consequence of its own effort. Here, we review existing models and argue that they fail to capture many important components of parental conflict. For example, we lack adequate models of how a parent should compensate for a reduction in the effort of its mate. These models should incorporate the process by which decisions are reached. Recent theory suggests that a parent benefits by handicapping itself, and more experimental and theoretical work on this topic could be fruitful. We also need more theoretical work on attractiveness that incorporates consistent interactions between males and females.There are many forms of parental care and many ways in which care can be costly to a parent, in that it reduces their reproductive success in other breeding attempts [1,2]. Parental care involves a high level of energy expenditure, which might reduce the condition of the parent at the end of the breeding season. This can reduce the future survival of the care-provider and, hence, its probability of breeding the following year. A parent that deserts its mate and young has greater opportunities to pair with a new partner within the current breeding season than does a parent that cares. Even if a male remains with his mate and young, it might be possible to increase his chances of copulating with females other than his mate by decreasing his level of care and devoting more time to courting other females [3]. Such matings are known as extra-pair copulations (EPCs).Although the details vary across species, the success of the young generally depends on the care from both parents, whereas the cost to a parent depends on its own effort. Thus, a conflict of interest emerges [4,5], with each parent preferring the other to do the hard work. Here, we focus on sexual conflict over care, although the parents might also disagree about family size, timing of breeding or the sex ratio of their offspring [6]. For a broader account of sexual conflict, see [7].The benefit that results from a particular level of care by a parent depends on the behaviour of its partner, whereas the cost of care in terms of lost mating opportunities depends on the behaviour of other members of the population. For example, if a male deserts, his chances of obtaining a new mate will depend on the number of females that have also deserted their mate and are hence available. If a male seeks EPCs, then his chances of obtaining them depend on the receptiveness of females in the population and the extent to which males allocate their time to guarding their mates from other males as opposed to caring for their young or seeking EPCs [8]. These complex interactions make it difficult to use verbal arguments to predict the level of care that will evolve. Theory attempts to predict the outcome of evolution by constructing mathematical models that expose the logic of parental conflict. Here, we co...

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Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict between parents over care

Houston

Székely

McNamara

2005

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

349

316

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“…This could lead to some individuals cheating if they invest proportionally more in present signalling and less in future signalling than others (Kokko 1998). This might be the case when individuals within a population differ in their future reproductive value.…”

Section:  2000 the Association For The Study Of Animal Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased signalling effort when survival prospects decrease: male–male competition ensures honesty

Candolin

2000

Animal Behaviour

100

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“…Work in species with male care has focused on the benefits to females of choosing good fathers and the trade-off between offspring care and male survival (Kraak & Weissing 1996;Kraak et al 1999). A recent model of male advertisement of parental care (Kokko 1998) showed that whether a species fits the good-parent hypothesis or the differential-allocation hypothesis depends on a male's marginal gains from multiple matings. This model was intended to apply generally to species where males might provide care, yet allows males to have current reproductive success while providing no care, which makes it inapplicable to species where some male care is required for offspring survival.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Theoretical models of honest advertisement of care are also often based on biparental systems of care (Price et al 1993;Westneat & Sargent 1996;Kokko 1998;Kokko et al 2002), where females that choose a male that advertises dishonestly are able to compensate for his decreased level of care by increasing their own level of parental care. This focus on biparental and female-only care systems has resulted in a gap in our understanding of honest advertisement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will male advertisement be a reliable indicator of paternal care, if offspring survival depends on male care?

Kelly

Alonzo

2009

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Existing theory predicts that male signalling can be an unreliable indicator of paternal care, but assumes that males with high levels of mating success can have high current reproductive success, without providing any parental care. As a result, this theory does not hold for the many species where offspring survival depends on male parental care. We modelled male allocation of resources between advertisement and care for species with male care where males vary in quality, and the effect of care and advertisement on male fitness is multiplicative rather than additive. Our model predicts that males will allocate proportionally more of their resources to whichever trait (advertisement or paternal care) is more fitness limiting. In contrast to previous theory, we find that male advertisement is always a reliable indicator of paternal care and male phenotypic quality (e.g. males with higher levels of advertisement never allocate less to care than males with lower levels of advertisement). Our model shows that the predicted pattern of male allocation and the reliability of male signalling depend very strongly on whether paternal care is assumed to be necessary for offspring survival and how male care affects offspring survival and male fitness.

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Should advertising parental care be honest?

Cited by 178 publications

References 73 publications

Conflict between parents over care

Conflict between parents over care

Increased signalling effort when survival prospects decrease: male–male competition ensures honesty

Will male advertisement be a reliable indicator of paternal care, if offspring survival depends on male care?

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