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

Abstract

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.

The impact of acoustic signalling on offspring performance varies between three biparentally caring species

“…Just like in the other species we believe that the parents' feeding behaviour is disrupted (Conrad, unpublished data) and because N. orbicollis larvae are highly dependent on parental care (Capodeanu-Nägler et al, 2016) they cannot feed themselves sufficiently. Again this result differs from that of Schrader and Galanek (Schrader & Galanek, 2022) who found no effect of silencing in N. orbicollis. Apart from the reasons mentioned earlier for N. vespilloides, they also only looked at total brood mass and breeding success at dispersal, which might have been insufficient to detect differences.…”

“…At first glance this result seems surprising as it appears to be in contrast to the results of Schrader and Galanek (2022) who found no effect of silencing the parents in N. vespilloides. However, Schrader and Galanek used natural brood sizes instead of our standardized ones, which probably led to far more variation which in turn would have obscured the differences.…”

“…However, Schrader and Galanek used natural brood sizes instead of our standardized ones, which probably led to far more variation which in turn would have obscured the differences. Additionally, it is possible that our method of using glue and parafilm is superior to elytral clipping in detecting any effects as it allowed us to have an actual control group that was treated in the same way which the authors admit was lacking in their study (Schrader & Galanek, 2022). Finally, they focused on only a few reproductive parameters and as mentioned did not account for between-individual variation in brood size, which leads -due to the strong dependency of larval mass on brood size -to high variation in larval growth between broods (Bartlett, 1988;A.…”