PARENTAL

CARE
CHAPTER 14
PARENTAL CARE
• Behaviors by a parent to enhance the fitness of
offspring, including incubation, feeding, and
defense
• If parental care increases offspring survival, why
don’t all species provide high levels of care to their
young?
LIFE HISTORY THEORY
• Natural selection will favor the evolution of
behaviors that maximize an individual’s lifetime
reproductive success
• Life history traits: traits involved with growth,
reproduction and survivorship
• Examples: age of sexual maturity, number and size
of offspring, level of parental care, and survival rate
through life
THE TRADE-OFF
• Life history trade-off: effort allocated toward reproduction
reduces effort that can be allocated toward an individual’s own
growth and survival
• Effort allocated to current offspring reduces effort that can
be allocated toward future offspring
• Evolution favors the “extremes”
• Either investing a lot of care or investing no care
• What type of selection is this?
• Disruptive!
IN GENERAL
• Taxa that have longer life spans produce a
relatively small number of large offspring and
exhibit higher levels of parental care (example:
whales, humans)
• Short life span tend to produce many small
offspring (example: small birds, invertebrates, fish)
 LIFE HISTORY VARIATION IN FISH
• Researchers examined life history patterns in more
than 300 fish species
• Estimated life history traits in each species
• Ex. age of sexual maturity, maximum body size, length of
breeding season, and level of parental care
• Larger animals had later maturation, higher fecundity
and few reproductive events per year
• Species with more parental care tended to have larger
eggs
TYPES OF PARENTAL CARE
• Maternal care: parental care provided by a female to
her offspring
• Paternal care: parental care that a male provides to
offspring
• Biparental care: both parents provide care for
offspring
 FEMALE BIASED
PARENTAL CARE
• Parental care increases likelihood of offspring
survival
• But, it comes at a cost
• Each sex will benefit if the other sex invests in parental care
• Leads to sexual conflict
• How is it resolved?
• Females generally have greater certainty of offspring relatedness
than males
• Reduced certainty in offspring’s paternity reduces likelihood of
males investing in raising the offspring
• Could be another male’s!
• Natural selection favors males that reduce parental care in
order to allocate more effort to future offspring (more
sexual partners; more possible offspring)
 BLUE-FOOTED
BOOBIES

• Single male and female form a pair bond and raise eggs
together
• Both sexes shared incubation of eggs and feeding of
offspring
• If a male is uncertain of his paternity, would he invest as
much in offspring care?
• Removed male for 11 hours during female’s fertile period
•All males quickly returned to their mate after the removal
period
• 7/16 experimental males removed the first egg laid by
their mate
• No control males removed an egg
• Male boobies reduce parental care when their paternity
EVOLUTION
OF MALE-ONLY
CARE
• Mammals and birds have internal fertilization and
determinate growth: stop growing when they reach adult
size
• Fishes, amphibians and reptiles exhibit external
fertilization (males fertilize a laid egg) and
indeterminate growth: they never stop growing
• Increases level of certainty in paternity for males; reduces
cost of providing care to unrelated offspring
• Females increase in fecundity with size, so spending time
foraging is better than looking after offspring
• More foraging leads to bigger body size; therefore, higher
MODE OF FERTILIZATION
• Male-only care is most likely to evolve in fishes,
amphibians, and reptiles with external
fertilization and multiple reproductive events
• Life history strategies:
• Iteroparity: a life history strategy in which there
are multiple reproductive events throughout the
lifetime
• Semelparity: a life history strategy in which
reproduction occurs only once in a lifetime
• E.g. salmon
SUNFISH
• Does sunfish male nest behavior change in
response to paternity certainty?
• Placed containers of “sneaker” males by the
territory
• Controls just has empty containers
• Placed a predator in a container and measured
defense behavior
• Treatment males (those exposed to sneakers)
showed significantly less egg defense behaviors
• Less certainty, less parental bx
HORMONES REGULATE
PATERNAL CARE
• Steroid hormones such as
estradiol and progesterone vary
with pregnancy
• Strongly affects courtship and
reproductive behavior
• Prolactin: a hormone that
influences parental care in
vertebrates
• Involved in milk production
• Rises during pregnancy and falls
when offspring are weaned
• Does prolactin affect parental
care?
PROLACTIN IN RATS
• Researchers manipulated prolactin in female rats
that had never given birth
• Suppressed prolactin secretion using a drug, removed
ovaries to control for other hormones, and
administered hormones directly to brain
• Placed three unrelated pups and measured typical
parental behaviors: latency to contact, retrieval of
pups, and crouching behavior (to keep them warm)
• Females treated with prolactin displayed
significantly higher levels of parental
care behavior
• But, they needed to be primed with
progesterone (hormone involved in
pregnancy) and estradiol
PROLACTIN IN PENGUINS
• Prolactin levels increase during egg laying
in penguins
• Prolactin presence affects incubation behavior
• What is the proximate mechanism that causes the
increase?
• Sight of eggs causes increase in prolactin
• Tactile stimulation of brood patch increases prolactin
• Brood patch: featherless area on the belly that is well
vascularized for heat transfer to eggs during incubation
• Allowed birds to see artificial egg, OR to incubate an
egg (visual and tactile)
• Visual and tactile stimulation resulting in increased
prolactin levels, increased maternal care, and
development of a larger brood patch (important
PREDATION RISK IN
GOLDEN EGG BUGS
• Female bugs can lay eggs on males, or on
vegetation
• Eggs on vegetation have lower survivorship
• Eggs cause increased predation on the males
• Females mate with multiple males... So paternity
is uncertain
• Why would males risk this behavior?
• Two hypotheses:
• Sexual selection: males that perform this
behavior are more attractive to females
• Experimental evidence disproved this
• Natural selection: common if it provides a
greater net benefit to the males
NATURAL SELECTION IN
GOLDEN EGG BUGS
• Males sire 10-40% of the offspring they carry
• Amount of egg carrying behavior varies across
populations
• Egg carrying behavior is favored when lack of
care leads to very low offspring survival
• Males provide care despite paternity uncertainty to
increase offspring survival
OPPORTUNITY COSTS
• The fitness costs of not engaging in other
activities
• If guarding eggs, the male cannot search for other
mates
• Male frogs will spend less time guarding smaller
clutches of eggs compared to larger clutches of
eggs
• Why?
• Less to lose; less care demanded and can find
other mating opportunities instead
PARENT-OFFSPRING
CONFLICT THEORY
• Parents should maximize their lifetime
reproductive fitness
• Offspring should maximize the energy and
protection they receive from their parents to
survive to reproductive age
• Parental investment: any investment by the parents
that increases an individual offspring's chance of
survival, while at the cost of the ability to invest in
other offspring
INCUBATION OF EIDER
EGGS
• How do current incubation costs affect future
reproduction in common eider?
• Females incubate clutch alone for 2 weeks; lose
40% of body mass
• Clutch size varies from 3-6 eggs
• Researchers predicted incubating a clutch of 6
eggs is more energetically costly (lose more
body mass)
• Does this affect future reproduction?
• Females with larger clutches lost more body
mass; laid eggs later and had
smaller clutch sizes the
following season
DIFFERENTIAL CARE
• Parents provide individual offspring different
levels of care
• Some offspring receive more care than others
• Brood reduction: the death of some siblings as a
result of reduced parental care for the purpose of
enhancing the fitness of surviving siblings
• Why?
• Can be adaptive for parent: if costs of caring for a
weaker offspring exceeds the benefits of providing
care, the parent should cease caring for offspring
 BLACKBIRDS
• Hatch asynchrony: the hatching of
offspring in a clutch of eggs on
different days
• Allows parents to modify parental
care behavior based on current
conditions
• Examined the survivorship of “core”
eggs and “marginal” eggs
• “Core” nestlings had higher mass
and higher survival
• “Marginal” nestlings at a competitive
disadvantage
• Would receive less parental care
overall due to reduced likelihood of
survival
FUR SEALS
• 35% of female fur seals will have
two offspring to provide care for
• Lactation is very costly
• Sometimes, a second offspring is born before the first
one is weaned
• Why then give birth in successive years?
• Cold upswellings have high nutritional content;
warmer water means lesser amounts of food
• In cold water years, the second siblings had higher
survivorship
• In years of high resources, can take advantage of
the “extra” offspring
• Low food availability, youngest pup mortality is high
 WHY PRODUCE EXTRA
OFFSPRING AT ALL?
• Extra offspring provide some “insurance”
• If first-born dies, a second can live
• Animals don’t know about future food availability
• May increase reproductive output if the food is abundant
• Increase reproductive output now, saves investment later
when food is scarce
• Brood reduction allows parents to adjust their
reproductive effort in response to
environmental conditions
BROOD PARASITISM
• A female (brood parasite) lays an egg in the nest
of another female
• The parasitized female could reject the egg if
she recognizes it isn’t her own
• How could a brood parasite reduce the likelihood
of egg rejection?
CASE OF THE
CUCKOO BIRD
• Cuckoos do not nest on their own; obligate
brood parasites
• Brood parasitizes other different species

• They produce eggs that are similar in size,

shape, and color of the host bird
BUT NOT ONLY CUCKOOS...
• Conspecifics could attempt to parasitize a nest
of the same group or species
• Three potential female tactics:
1. Lay all eggs in own nest (nonparasite)
2. Lay all eggs in other females’ nests (pure parasite)
3. Lay some in her own, and some in other females
nests (mixed strategy)
CONSPECIFIC BROOD
PARASITISM IN DUCKS
• Goldeneye ducks exhibit all three forms of reproductive
tactics
• Which one is the most effective?
• Researchers used genetic analysis and observational data
to determine egg maternity
• The nesting AND parasitizing tactic (#3) was the most
successful
• Laid 50% more eggs than nonparasites or pure parasites
• Eggs laid in host nests survived
• Selection favored variation in the tactics used by a female
across years
• More work is needed to understand why this occurrs
• Parasitism likely minimizes costs associated with parental care