Chapter 14

Parental care: activities of an adult that enhance the survivorship of

offspring

- Incubating eggs, nourishing young, defense from predators, sometimes

transporting them

Life history traits: traits involved with growth, reproduction, and

survivorship that are the result of natural selection

- Age at 1st reproduction, number & size of offspring, level of parental

care, offspring survival rate

Life history theory: natural selection will favor the evolution of behaviors
that maximize an individual’s lifetime reproductive success

- But energy (effort) is limited – needs to be allocated for self-growth and

maintenance, but also to offspring during reproduction and parental
care

^Effort (energy) allocated to reproduction

Life history trade-offs: effort allocated to reproduction reduces effort that

can be allocated to an individual’s growth and survivorship

Across species, evolution of life history traits varies alone a continuum

Add chart here (example fruit flies A, elephant C, body size below life span
small-large)

Life history Strategy

- Iteroparity: there are multiple reproductive events throughout the

lifetime
o External fertilization + iteroparity = most likely male-only care
- Semelparity: reproduction occurs only once in the lifetime
o Salmon – males do not provide care
- Example life history variation in fish
o Fish vary in their lifetime history traits, including level of parental
care, can life history theory explain this variation?
o Results: species with larger body size -> later maturation ->
larger egg -> fewer reproductive events per year -> higher
levels of parental care. Small species showed the opposite
trends
o Conclusion: these patterns reflect basic life history theory
 - Do humans show life history trade-offs?
o Analyzed female British aristocracy over 1100 years
o Results: negative correlation between lifespan and number of
offspring
 More children they had, the shorter was their lifespan
o Results: positive correlation between lifespan and age of first
reproduction
 They lived longer when age of first reproduction was later
o Both patterns are consistent with life history theory trade-offs

Variation in Parental care

- Maternal care: only females provide care

- Paternal care: only males provide care
- Biparental care: both species provide care

Sex-biased parental care

- In many species, females provide more parental care than males

- Sexual conflict: each sex has different benefits and costs of providing
care

Parental care

- (up) increased offspring survival (benefits both sexes)

- (down) time, energy, higher predation risk for parent
- Each sex will benefit if other pays the cost -> sexual conflict

How to resolve sexual conflict?

- Whichever sex has higher costs -> should invest less in parental care
- Factor: Certainty of offspring
o Males tend to be less certain of offspring paternity, so they have
higher cost of providing care (care for unrelated individuals)
o This favors the evolution of reduced care by males

Paternity uncertainty and parental care: Blue-footed Booby

- Males vary the level of care within a clutch of offspring

- Prediction: males will provide low care when certainty of paternity is
low
- Results: 7 to 16 experimental males removed the first egg laid by their
mate from the nest. No control males removed eggs from the nest.

Factors that predict:

 - Male-only care
o External fertilization: increases certainty of paternity for males ->
this lowers the cost of care for males
o Indeterminate growth: never stop growing
o Cost of parental care is higher for females
 Larger females can produce more eggs
 Parental care is most costly to females
 Limits growth and future fecundity
- Iteroparity: there are multiple reproductive events throughout the
lifetime

Parental care

- These costs and benefits will affect the level of care provided
o Up – effort allocated to current offspring
o Down – effort allocated future reproduction

Parental care involves fitness trade-offs

- Parent-offspring conflict theory: parents and their dependent

offspring are under different selection pressures:
o Parents should maximize their lifetime reproductive success
o Offspring should maximize the energy and protection they
receive from parents to survive to reproductive age
- Parental investment: any investment by parents in an offspring that
increases offspring survival at the cost
- Predation risk vs. parental care: Songbirds
o Prediction: parents should value their own survival over offspring
when predation risk is high
o Results
 Pre-stimulus and control periods -> no difference in food
delivery rates
 Predator stimulus treatment -> reduced food delivery rate
o Conclusion: adults modify level of parental care in response to a
heightened risk of mortality (supports a key prediction of parent-
offspring conflict theory)
- Egg guarding vs. missed opportunities: Big-thumbed frog
o Egg-guarding parental care increases offspring success.
 Egg mortality was negatively correlated with male
attendance
  Male attendance was positively correlated with egg mass
clutch size
o But not all males attend eggs at a high level. Why?
 Males with small clutches (20-30 eggs) may be searching
for additional mating opportunities
- Current vs. future reproduction: Treehoppers
o Withing a species, there is much variation in parental care such
as egg guarding. Why?
o Hypothesis: There is a trade-off between current and future
reproduction
 Prediction 1: egg guarding will increase egg survival
(current reproduction)
 Prediction 2: increases egg guarding will decrease future
reproduction
o Results
 Egg hatching success was positively correlated with female
egg-guarding duration
 Females that guarded a clutch for more than 10 days had
fewer and smaller future broods than females that spent
less time egg guarding
o Conclusion: parental care (egg guarding) enhances current
reproductive success but at a cost of future reproduction