scholarly journals Alloparental care in glassfrogs: males care for unrelated clutches only when associated with their own

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anyelet Valencia-Aguilar ◽  
Juan M. Guayasamin ◽  
Cynthia P. A. Prado
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Mating Success ◽  
Alloparental Care ◽  
Offspring Survival ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Similar Frequency ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Hormonal Levels

AbstractParental care is costly, thus theory predicts that parents should avoid caring for unrelated offspring. However, alloparenting has been reported in many taxa because it may increase the caregiver mating success or offspring survival. We experimentally investigated the existence of allopaternal care in two glassfrog species, Hyalinobatrachium chirripoi and Centrolene peristicta, and discussed possible costs and benefits. Males mated with multiple females and cared for clutches, while continued to call. In the field, we randomly placed unrelated clutches in the territory of males already caring for their clutches and in the territory of non-attending males. Attending males adopted unrelated clutches, whereas non-attending males abandoned their territories. Once males adopted unrelated offspring, they cared for all clutches in a similar frequency and gained new clutches. Alloparenting was context-dependent, as only males already caring for their clutches adopted unrelated ones. We suggest that steroid hormonal levels might mediate the adoption of unrelated offspring by attending males. Additionally, our results suggest that males do not directly discriminate between related and unrelated offspring. Alloparenting has been widely investigated in different vertebrates, except for amphibians. Thus, our study sheds light on the roles of alloparenting for offspring survival and mating success in this group.

scholarly journals Adoption as a gosling strategy to obtain better parental care? Experimental evidence for gosling choice and age-dependency of adoption in greylag geese

Behaviour ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 142 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 1515-1533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Komdeur ◽  
Ellen Kalmbach ◽  
Pascal van der Aa
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Individual Recognition ◽  
Alloparental Care ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
Anser Anser ◽  
State Dependent ◽  
Greylag Goose ◽  
Large Brood ◽  
Greylag Geese

AbstractAdoptions of unrelated young by successful breeders are a form of alloparental care which has been observed in many species of geese. Depending on costs and benefits to the parents, adoptions might represent an inter-generational conflict or a mutually beneficial strategy. Although most studies of wild populations suggest benefits of large brood sizes, incidental observations mostly report aggressive behaviour of parents towards lone goslings. No studies have investigated mechanisms and behaviour during adoptions in order to test whether adoptions are driven by parents or goslings. To test whether goslings might use adoption as a strategy to obtain better parental care, we carried out an experiment where lone greylag goose (Anser anser) goslings could choose between a dominant and a subordinate foster family. In a second experiment we also tested whether adoption was age-dependent. Except for one case, all lone goslings (N = 16) chose the dominant family. Parents showed very little aggression towards lone goslings at three days after hatch, but aggression increased until 9 days and remained high thereafter. At the same time as aggression increased, the chance of successful adoption decreased. In the first five weeks of life, goslings which had been adopted were no further away from parents than original goslings during grazing. These results show that goslings might choose foster families according to dominance. The fact that with increasing gosling age parents are less willing to adopt could be due to improved individual recognition and reflect decreasing benefits of gaining an additional family member. More detailed studies on state-dependent costs and benefits of adoptions are required to determine whether adoptions in geese represent conflict or mutualism, and why this changes with gosling age.

scholarly journals Sexual selection favours male parental care, when females can choose

2011 ◽  
Vol 279 (1734) ◽  
pp. 1784-1790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne H. Alonzo
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Female Choice ◽  
Mating Success ◽  
Current Theory ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Extra Pair Paternity ◽  
Female Promiscuity ◽  
Male Care

Explaining the evolution of male care has proved difficult. Recent theory predicts that female promiscuity and sexual selection on males inherently disfavour male care. In sharp contrast to these expectations, male-only care is often found in species with high extra-pair paternity and striking variation in mating success, where current theory predicts female-only care. Using a model that examines the coevolution of male care, female care and female choice; I show that inter-sexual selection can drive the evolution of male care when females are able to bias mating or paternity towards parental males. Surprisingly, female choice for parental males allows male care to evolve despite low relatedness between the male and the offspring in his care. These results imply that predicting how sexual selection affects parental care evolution will require further understanding of why females, in many species, either do not prefer or cannot favour males that provide care.

Show me you care: female mate choice based on egg attendance rather than male or territorial traits

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 1054-1064 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anyelet Valencia-Aguilar ◽  
Kelly R Zamudio ◽  
Célio F B Haddad ◽  
Steve M Bogdanowicz ◽  
Cynthia P A Prado
Keyword(s):  
Mate Choice ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Paternal Care ◽  
Genetic Relatedness ◽  
Female Mate Choice ◽  
Male Reproductive Success ◽  
Offspring Survival ◽  
Territory Quality ◽  
Female Mate

Abstract Female mate choice is often based on male traits, including signals or behaviors, and/or the quality of a male’s territory. In species with obligate paternal care, where care directly affects offspring survival, females may also base their mate choices on the quality of a sire’s care. Here, we quantified male reproductive success in a natural population of the glass frog Hyalinobatrachium cappellei, a species with male parental care, to determine the influence of territory quality, male traits, and paternal care behaviors on female mate choice. We found that attending males have a higher chance of gaining new clutches than nonattending males. Our results indicate that females do not select males based only on body condition, calling persistence, or territory traits. Instead, our findings support the hypothesis that females choose males based on care status. Indeed, males already attending a clutch were 70% more likely to obtain another clutch, and the time to acquire an additional clutch was significantly shorter. We also found that males adjust their parental care effort in response to genetic relatedness by caring only for their own offspring; however, remaining close to unrelated clutches serves as a strategy to attract females and increase chances of successful mating. Thus, males that establish territories that already contain clutches benefit from the signal eggs provide to females.

Effect of sand texture on nest quality and mating success in a fish with parental care

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin H. Olsson ◽  
Elisabet Forsgren ◽  
Sami Merilaita ◽  
Charlotta Kvarnemo ◽  
Colette St Mary
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Mating Success ◽  
Nest Quality

Parental Care Not Likely to Explain Poor Mating Success in Yearling Male American Redstarts

The Condor ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 836-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin E. Omland ◽  
Thomas W. Sherry
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Mating Success ◽  
American Redstarts

Intraspecific variation in the egg-wrapping behaviour of female smooth newts, Lissotriton vulgaris

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Tóth ◽  
Herbert Hoi ◽  
Attila Hettyey
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Individual Variation ◽  
Plant Material ◽  
Offspring Survival ◽  
Lissotriton Vulgaris ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Second Period ◽  
Day By Day

AbstractIn many species of the Salamandridae family, females provide parental care by carefully wrapping plant material around their eggs. As this behaviour has been shown to have a large effect on offspring survival, variation in this trait is expected to be low. Detailed investigations are, however, lacking. In the present study, we analyzed the consistency of egg-wrapping behaviour in two time periods within a breeding season in female smooth newts (Lissotriton vulgaris). We found a surprisingly low proportion of wrapped eggs of around 47% during the first period (when males were present) and an almost doubled ratio of around 92% in the second period (when males were absent). Also, the variation between individuals was significantly lower in the second period than in the first one. Furthermore, the bigger the females were, the more the proportion of wrapped eggs increased day by day within the first period; however, this relationship did not fully explain the observed difference between the two periods. Our results suggest that parental care in smooth newts can be influenced by the presence of mating partners and body size, and provide the first empirical evidence for within-individual variation in egg-wrapping in a salamandrid species.

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