Behavioral dynamics between caring males and females in a beetle with facultative biparental care (original) (raw)
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Selection, Inheritance, and the Evolution of Parent‐Offspring Interactions
The American Naturalist, 2004
Very few studies have examined parent-offspring interactions from a quantitative genetic perspective. We used a crossfostering design and measured genetic correlations and components of social selection arising from two parental and two offspring behaviors in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. Genetic correlations were assessed by examining behavior of relatives independent of common social influences. We found positive genetic correlations between all pairs of behaviors, including between parent and offspring behaviors. Patterns of selection were assessed by standardized performance and selection gradients. Parental provisioning had positive effects on offspring performance and fitness, while remaining near the larvae without feeding them had negative effects. Begging had positive effects on offspring performance and fitness, while increased competition among siblings had negative effects. Coadaptations between parenting and offspring behavior appear to be maintained by genetic correlations and functional trade-offs; parents that feed their offspring more also spend more time in the area where they can forage for themselves. Families with high levels of begging have high levels of sibling competition. Integrating information from genetics and selection thus provides a general explanation for why variation persists in seemingly beneficial traits expressed in parent-offspring interactions and illustrates why it is important to measure functionally related suites of behaviors.
Complex social behaviour derived from maternal reproductive traits
Nature, 2006
A fundamental goal of sociobiology is to explain how complex social behaviour evolves 1 , especially in social insects, the exemplars of social living. Although still the subject of much controversy 2 , recent theoretical explanations have focused on the evolutionary origins of worker behaviour (assistance from daughters that remain in the nest and help their mother to reproduce) through expression of maternal care behaviour towards siblings . A key prediction of this evolutionary model is that traits involved in maternal care have been co-opted through heterochronous expression of maternal genes 5 to result in sibcare, the hallmark of highly evolved social life in insects 6 . A coupling of maternal behaviour to reproductive status evolved in solitary insects, and was a ready substrate for the evolution of worker-containing societies . Here we show that division of foraging labour among worker honey bees (Apis mellifera) is linked to the reproductive status of facultatively sterile females. We thereby identify the evolutionary origin of a widely expressed social-insect behavioural syndrome 1,5,7,9 , and provide a direct demonstration of how variation in maternal reproductive traits gives rise to complex social behaviour in non-reproductive helpers.
Ecology and Evolution
The social environment is arguably the most dynamic and fluctuating environmental component organisms encounter and respond to (Royle, Russell, & Wilson, 2014; Taborsky & Oliveira, 2012). This is because in social interactions, the "environment" consists of other interacting individuals expressing phenotypes that are also subject to evolution (Moore, Brodie, & Wolf, 1997). These social environments differ from nonsocial environments such as temperature and food availability not just in their dynamism but also in their heritable properties. When the phenotype of a focal individual is affected by genes being expressed in another individual with whom they are or have been interacting, for example, when individuals respond to the behavior of another individual by changing their own behavior (i.e., social plasticity; Royle et al., 2014;
Differentiating among alternative models for the resolution of parent–offspring conflict
Behavioral Ecology, 2013
Understanding the behavioral mechanisms mediating the resolution of parent–offspring conflict is an important challenge given that the resolution of this conflict shapes the transfer of resources from parents to offspring. Three alternative models suggest that offspring begging provides an important behavioral mechanism for conflict resolution: honest signaling, scramble competition, and cost-free signaling models. However, there has so far been little progress in testing between these models because they share the same predictions. Here, we test between these models by focusing on their contrasting assumptions concerning who controls resource allocation and whether begging is costly in 2 experiments conducted on the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the degree to which offspring and parents can control resource allocation by presenting broods with age-based competitive asymmetries with a live or a dead female parent. We found that seniors (i.e., older larvae) gained more access to the parent’s mouthparts than juniors only when presented with a live parent. In Experiment 2, we provided parents with broods of 60 newly hatched larvae and found that larvae were more likely to become a target of filial cannibalism when begging than would be expected if parents targeted larvae irrespective of their behavior. These findings suggest that offspring begging increases the parents’ influence over food allocation and that begging is costly by increasing the offspring’s risk of being a target of filial cannibalism. Our results support the assumptions of honest signaling models for the resolution of parent–offspring conflict.
Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology
The evolution of elaborate forms of parental care is an important topic in behavioral ecology, yet the factors shaping the evolution of complex suites of parental and offspring traits are poorly understood. Here, we use a multivariate quantitative genetic approach to study phenotypic and genetic correlations between parental and offspring traits in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. To this end, we recorded 2 prenatal traits (clutch size and egg size), 2 postnatal parental behaviors (direct care directed toward larvae and indirect care directed toward resource maintenance), 1 offspring behavior (begging), and 2 measures of breeding success (larval dispersal mass and number of dispersing larvae). Females breeding on larger carcasses provided less direct care but produced larger larvae than females breeding on smaller carcasses. Furthermore, there were positive phenotypic correlations between clutch size, direct, and indirect care. Both egg size and direct care were positive...
Theoretical Issues Concerning the Evolution and Development of Behavior in Social Insects
Integrative and Comparative Biology, 1972
SYNOPSIS. The major theoretical contributions concerning the behavior of social insects reflect a dichotomous predilection, in that most studies have been approached from either an ontogenetic perspective or from an evolutionary perspective. Wheeler and, to a greater extent, Schneirla have concentrated on an analytic and developmental approach, aimed at explicating how processes of reciprocal stimulation among all members of the colony serve to keep the individuals together and functioning as an integrated unit. Hamilton, by contrast, has emphasized the evolutionary approach, by considering the adaptive value of the genetic mechanism of sex determination that occurs in the insect order Hymenoptera. Attempting to explain the occurrence of any behavior pattern only in terms of its adaptive value is, in a sense, arguing from hindsight, because there is no way of predicting in advance whether any particular adaptive characteristic will indeed evolve. Furthermore, evolution selects for reproductively adaptive outcomes, and not for any particular set of mechanisms and processes that produce the adaptive phenotype. As a result, an understanding of these mechanisms and processes can only come from developmental studies of behavior. It is concluded, therefore, that ontogenetic and phylogenetic approaches are complementary and that both are necessary for a complete understanding of the evolution and development of behavior.