scholarly journals The evolution of parental cooperation in birds

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (44) ◽  
pp. 13603-13608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimír Remeš ◽  
Robert P. Freckleton ◽  
Jácint Tökölyi ◽  
András Liker ◽  
Tamás Székely
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Model System ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Species Ranges ◽  
Parental Strategies ◽  
Life History Variables

Parental care is one of the most variable social behaviors and it is an excellent model system to understand cooperation between unrelated individuals. Three major hypotheses have been proposed to explain the extent of parental cooperation: sexual selection, social environment, and environmental harshness. Using the most comprehensive dataset on parental care that includes 659 bird species from 113 families covering both uniparental and biparental taxa, we show that the degree of parental cooperation is associated with both sexual selection and social environment. Consistent with recent theoretical models parental cooperation decreases with the intensity of sexual selection and with skewed adult sex ratios. These effects are additive and robust to the influence of life-history variables. However, parental cooperation is unrelated to environmental factors (measured at the scale of whole species ranges) as indicated by a lack of consistent relationship with ambient temperature, rainfall or their fluctuations within and between years. These results highlight the significance of social effects for parental cooperation and suggest that several parental strategies may coexist in a given set of ambient environment.

Sex differences in parental care: Gametic investment, sexual selection, and social environment

Evolution ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (11) ◽  
pp. 2862-2875 ◽  
Author(s):  
András Liker ◽  
Robert P. Freckleton ◽  
Vladimir Remeš ◽  
Tamás Székely
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Social Environment

Experimentally increased costs of parental care are shunted to offspring in species with extended care

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gretchen F. Wagner ◽  
Emeline Mourocq ◽  
Michael Griesser
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Total Duration ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Life History Strategy ◽  
Experimental Treatment ◽  
Cost Of Care ◽  
Adult Survival ◽  
Supporting Evidence ◽  
Trade Offs

Biparental care systems are a valuable model to examine conflict, cooperation, and coordination between unrelated individuals, as the product of the interactions between the parents influences the fitness of both individuals. A common experimental technique for testing coordinated responses to changes in the costs of parental care is to temporarily handicap one parent, inducing a higher cost of providing care. However, dissimilarity in experimental designs of these studies has hindered interspecific comparisons of the patterns of cost distribution between parents and offspring. Here we apply a comparative experimental approach by handicapping a parent at nests of five bird species using the same experimental treatment. In some species, a decrease in care by a handicapped parent was compensated by its partner, while in others the increased costs of care were shunted to the offspring. Parental responses to an increased cost of care primarily depended on the total duration of care that offspring require. However, life history pace (i.e., adult survival and fecundity) did not influence parental decisions when faced with a higher cost of caring. Our study highlights that a greater attention to intergenerational trade-offs is warranted, particularly in species with a large burden of parental care. Moreover, we demonstrate that parental care decisions may be weighed more against physiological workload constraints than against future prospects of reproduction, supporting evidence that avian species may devote comparable amounts of energy into survival, regardless of life history strategy.

Are parental care trade-offs in shorebirds driven by parental investment or sexual selection?

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 672-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. A. OLSON ◽  
T. J. WEBB ◽  
R. P. FRECKLETON ◽  
T. SZÉKELY
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Parental Investment ◽  
Trade Offs

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.

Parental Care and Sexual Selection

2008 ◽  
pp. 377-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Lindström ◽  
Colette Mary
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Parental Care

Water Beetles as Models in Ecology and Evolution

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 359-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Bilton ◽  
Ignacio Ribera ◽  
Andrew Edward Z. Short
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Conservation Biology ◽  
Model System ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Aquatic Habitats ◽  
Water Beetles ◽  
Dna Taxonomy ◽  
Evolutionary Radiations ◽  
Insect Group ◽  
Ecological Range

Beetles have colonized water many times during their history, with some of these events involving extensive evolutionary radiations and multiple transitions between land and water. With over 13,000 described species, they are one of the most diverse macroinvertebrate groups in most nonmarine aquatic habitats and occur on all continents except Antarctica. A combination of wide geographical and ecological range and relatively accessible taxonomy makes these insects an excellent model system for addressing a variety of questions in ecology and evolution. Work on water beetles has recently made important contributions to fields as diverse as DNA taxonomy, macroecology, historical biogeography, sexual selection, and conservation biology, as well as predicting organismal responses to global change. Aquatic beetles have some of the best resolved phylogenies of any comparably diverse insect group, and this, coupled with recent advances in taxonomic and ecological knowledge, is likely to drive an expansion of studies in the future.

scholarly journals Batch-produced, GIS-informed range maps for birds based on provenanced, crowd-sourced data inform conservation assessments

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0259299
Author(s):  
Ryan M. Huang ◽  
Wilderson Medina ◽  
Thomas M. Brooks ◽  
Stuart H. M. Butchart ◽  
John W. Fitzpatrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Threatened Species ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Batch Processing ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Species Ranges ◽  
Conservation Assessments ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Near Threatened

Accurate maps of species ranges are essential to inform conservation, but time-consuming to produce and update. Given the pace of change of knowledge about species distributions and shifts in ranges under climate change and land use, a need exists for timely mapping approaches that enable batch processing employing widely available data. We develop a systematic approach of batch-processing range maps and derived Area of Habitat maps for terrestrial bird species with published ranges below 125,000 km2 in Central and South America. (Area of Habitat is the habitat available to a species within its range.) We combine existing range maps with the rapidly expanding crowd-sourced eBird data of presences and absences from frequently surveyed locations, plus readily accessible, high resolution satellite data on forest cover and elevation to map the Area of Habitat available to each species. Users can interrogate the maps produced to see details of the observations that contributed to the ranges. Previous estimates of Areas of Habitat were constrained within the published ranges and thus were, by definition, smaller—typically about 30%. This reflects how little habitat within suitable elevation ranges exists within the published ranges. Our results show that on average, Areas of Habitat are 12% larger than published ranges, reflecting the often-considerable extent that eBird records expand the known distributions of species. Interestingly, there are substantial differences between threatened and non-threatened species. Some 40% of Critically Endangered, 43% of Endangered, and 55% of Vulnerable species have Areas of Habitat larger than their published ranges, compared with 31% for Near Threatened and Least Concern species. The important finding for conservation is that threatened species are generally more widespread than previously estimated.

scholarly journals Sexual selection explains Rensch's rule of allometry for sexual size dimorphism

2007 ◽  
Vol 274 (1628) ◽  
pp. 2971-2979 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Dale ◽  
Peter O Dunn ◽  
Jordi Figuerola ◽  
Terje Lislevand ◽  
Tamás Székely ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Sexual Size Dimorphism ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Confounding Factors ◽  
Allometric Relationship ◽  
Rensch’S Rule ◽  
Size Dimorphism ◽  
Rensch's Rule ◽  
Clear Solution ◽  
General Explanation

In 1950, Rensch first described that in groups of related species, sexual size dimorphism is more pronounced in larger species. This widespread and fundamental allometric relationship is now commonly referred to as ‘Rensch's rule’. However, despite numerous recent studies, we still do not have a general explanation for this allometry. Here we report that patterns of allometry in over 5300 bird species demonstrate that Rensch's rule is driven by a correlated evolutionary change in females to directional sexual selection on males. First, in detailed multivariate analysis, the strength of sexual selection was, by far, the strongest predictor of allometry. This was found to be the case even after controlling for numerous potential confounding factors, such as overall size, degree of ornamentation, phylogenetic history and the range and degree of size dimorphism. Second, in groups where sexual selection is stronger in females, allometry consistently goes in the opposite direction to Rensch's rule. Taken together, these results provide the first clear solution to the long-standing evolutionary problem of allometry for sexual size dimorphism: sexual selection causes size dimorphism to correlate with species size.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document