Male burying beetles extend, not reduce, parental care duration when reproductive competition is high
dc.contributor.author | Hopwood, PE | en_GB |
dc.contributor.author | Moore, AJ | en_GB |
dc.contributor.author | Tregenza, T | en_GB |
dc.contributor.author | Royle, NJ | en_GB |
dc.date.accessioned | 2016-06-24T10:59:39Z | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2016-06-24T11:06:04Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2015-05-28 | en_GB |
dc.description.abstract | Male parents spend less time caring than females in many species with biparental care. The traditional explanation for this pattern is that males have lower confidence of parentage, so they desert earlier in favour of pursuing other mating opportunities. However, one recent alternative hypothesis is that prolonged male parental care might also evolve if staying to care actively improves paternity. If this is the case, an increase in reproductive competition should be associated with increased paternal care. To test this prediction, we manipulated the level of reproductive competition experienced by burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides (Herbst, 1783). We found that caregiving males stayed for longer and mated more frequently with their partner when reproductive competition was greater. Reproductive productivity did not increase when males extended care. Our findings provide support for the increased paternity hypothesis. Extended duration of parental care may be a male tactic both protecting investment (in the current brood) and maximizing paternity (in subsequent brood(s) via female stored sperm) even if this fails to maximize current reproductive productivity and creates conflict of interest with their mate via costs associated with increased mating frequency. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 28, pp. 1394 - 1402 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1111/jeb.12664 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/22254 | |
dc.relation.replaces | 10871/17646 | |
dc.relation.replaces | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/17646 | |
dc.relation.url | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/22253 | |
dc.rights | © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Evolutionary Biology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Society for Evolutionary Biology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | |
dc.title | Male burying beetles extend, not reduce, parental care duration when reproductive competition is high | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | |
dc.date.available | 2016-06-24T10:59:39Z | |
dc.date.available | 2016-06-24T11:06:04Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 1010-061X | en_GB |
pubs.merge-from | 10871/17646 | |
pubs.merge-from | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/17646 | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this record | |
dc.description | The author accepted manuscript is also in ORE: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/22253 | |
dc.identifier.journal | Journal of Evolutionary Biology | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2019-03-27T15:07:49Z |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Evolutionary Biology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Society for Evolutionary Biology.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.