scholarly journals Trade-offs between energy maximization and parental care in a central place forager, the sea otter

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 1552-1566 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.M. Thometz ◽  
M.M. Staedler ◽  
J.A. Tomoleoni ◽  
J.L. Bodkin ◽  
G.B. Bentall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Sea Otter ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Energy Maximization ◽  
Central Place Forager

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 Multiple-stage decisions in a marine central-place forager

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 160043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari S. Friedlaender ◽  
David W. Johnston ◽  
Reny B. Tyson ◽  
Amanda Kaltenberg ◽  
Jeremy A. Goldbogen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Foraging Behaviour ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Foraging Efficiency ◽  
Feeding Rates ◽  
Marine Animals ◽  
Air Breathing ◽  
Baleen Whales ◽  
Multi Stage ◽  
Central Place Forager ◽  
Prey Patches

Air-breathing marine animals face a complex set of physical challenges associated with diving that affect the decisions of how to optimize feeding. Baleen whales (Mysticeti) have evolved bulk-filter feeding mechanisms to efficiently feed on dense prey patches. Baleen whales are central place foragers where oxygen at the surface represents the central place and depth acts as the distance to prey. Although hypothesized that baleen whales will target the densest prey patches anywhere in the water column, how depth and density interact to influence foraging behaviour is poorly understood. We used multi-sensor archival tags and active acoustics to quantify Antarctic humpback whale foraging behaviour relative to prey. Our analyses reveal multi-stage foraging decisions driven by both krill depth and density. During daylight hours when whales did not feed, krill were found in deep high-density patches. As krill migrated vertically into larger and less dense patches near the surface, whales began to forage. During foraging bouts, we found that feeding rates (number of feeding lunges per hour) were greatest when prey was shallowest, and feeding rates decreased with increasing dive depth. This strategy is consistent with previous models of how air-breathing diving animals optimize foraging efficiency. Thus, humpback whales forage mainly when prey is more broadly distributed and shallower, presumably to minimize diving and searching costs and to increase feeding rates overall and thus foraging efficiency. Using direct measurements of feeding behaviour from animal-borne tags and prey availability from echosounders, our study demonstrates a multi-stage foraging process in a central place forager that we suggest acts to optimize overall efficiency by maximizing net energy gain over time. These data reveal a previously unrecognized level of complexity in predator–prey interactions and underscores the need to simultaneously measure prey distribution in marine central place forager studies.

scholarly journals Male-only care and cuckoldry in black coucals: does parenting hamper sex life?

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1900) ◽  
pp. 20182789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignas Safari ◽  
Wolfgang Goymann ◽  
Hanna Kokko
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Paternal Care ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Mating Opportunities ◽  
Siring Success ◽  
Theoretical Considerations ◽  
Operational Sex Ratios ◽  
Do So

Providing parental care often reduces additional mating opportunities. Paternal care becomes easier to understand if trade-offs between mating and caring remain mild. The black coucalCentropus grilliicombines male-only parental care with 50% of all broods containing young sired by another male. To understand how much caring for offspring reduces a male's chance to sire additional young in other males' nests, we matched the production of extra-pair young in each nest with the periods during which potential extra-pair sires were either caring for offspring themselves or when they had no own offspring to care for. We found that males which cared for a clutch were not fully excluded from the pool of competitors for siring young in other males' nests. Instead, the relative siring success showed a temporary dip. Males were approximately 17% less likely to sire young in other males' nests while they were incubating, about 48% less likely to do so while feeding nestlings, followed by 26% when feeding fledglings, compared to the success of males that currently did not care for offspring. These results suggest that real-life care situations by males may involve trade-off structures that differ from, and are less strict than those frequently employed in theoretical considerations of operational sex ratios, sex roles and parenting decisions.

scholarly journals Patterns of energy acquisition by a central place forager: benefits of alternating short and long foraging trips

2004 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 824-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Ropert-Coudert ◽  
Rory P. Wilson ◽  
Francis Daunt ◽  
Akiko Kato
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Energy Acquisition ◽  
Central Place Forager

scholarly journals Patterns of Life-History Diversification in North American Fishes: implications for Population Regulation

1992 ◽  
Vol 49 (10) ◽  
pp. 2196-2218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk O. Winemiller ◽  
Kenneth A. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
North American ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Egg Size ◽  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Large Species ◽  
High Fecundity ◽  
Adult Growth ◽  
Trade Offs

Interspecific patterns of fish life histories were evaluated in relation to several theoretical models of life-history evolution. Data were gathered for 216 North American fish species (57 families) to explore relationships among variables and to ordinate species. Multivariate tests, performed on freshwater, marine, and combined data matrices, repeatedly identified a gradient associating later-maturing fishes with higher fecundity, small eggs, and few bouts of reproduction during a short spawning season and the opposite suite of traits with small fishes. A second strong gradient indicated positive associations between parental care, egg size, and extended breeding seasons. Phylogeny affected each variable, and some higher taxonomic groupings were associated with particular life-history strategies. High-fecundity characteristics tended to be associated with large species ranges in the marine environment. Age at maturation, adult growth rate, life span, and egg size positively correlated with anadromy. Parental care was inversely correlated with median latitude. A trilateral continuum based on essential trade-offs among three demographic variables predicts many of the correlations among life-history traits. This framework has implications for predicting population responses to diverse natural and anthropogenic disturbances and provides a basis for comparing responses of different species to the same disturbance.

Physiological cost of maternal care? Effect of pre- and post-hatching care on the clutch size in the earwig Anisolabis maritima

Behaviour ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 151 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seizi Suzuki
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Maternal Care ◽  
Lifetime Fecundity ◽  
Total Lifetime ◽  
Physiological Cost ◽  
Multiple Components ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
First Clutch ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Time Point

There may be a trade-off between parental care and future reproductive success. Parental care usually consists of multiple components, and quantifying the cost of each component is necessary to assess the exact costs of parental care. In this study, I examined the trade-offs associated with maternal care in the earwig Anisolabis maritima (Dermaptera: Anisolabididae). I evaluated how many clutches A. maritima can produce and how the number and size of the clutch are affected by maternal care, distinguishing the cost of each component. The interval from the time point at which the mothers were removed from their eggs or young to produce the next clutch differed with treatment, and a significant interaction was observed between the effects of clutch order and presence of care on the size of the next clutch when the first clutch was removed immediately. However, longevity and total lifetime fecundity were not different in the presence or absence of care. This showed that females which were removed from a clutch produced the second or later clutches more rapidly although the clutch sizes were smaller. Because the total lifetime fecundity did not differ, irrespective of the presence or absence of care, it is possible that the costs of such care in A. maritima have a small effect.

scholarly journals Sex roles, parental care and offspring growth in two contrasting coucal species

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 160463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Goymann ◽  
Ignas Safari ◽  
Christina Muck ◽  
Ingrid Schwabl
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Sex Roles ◽  
Evolutionary Ecology ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Uniparental Care ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Offspring Growth ◽  
Adult Sex Ratio

The decision to provide parental care is often associated with trade-offs, because resources allocated to parental care typically cannot be invested in self-maintenance or mating. In most animals, females provide more parental care than males, but the reason for this pattern is still debated in evolutionary ecology. To better understand sex differences in parental care and its consequences, we need to study closely related species where the sexes differ in offspring care. We investigated parental care in relation to offspring growth in two closely related coucal species that fundamentally differ in sex roles and parental care, but live in the same food-rich habitat with a benign climate and have a similar breeding phenology. Incubation patterns differed and uniparental male black coucals fed their offspring two times more often than female and male white-browed coucals combined. Also, white-browed coucals had more ‘off-times’ than male black coucals, during which they perched and preened. However, these differences in parental care were not reflected in offspring growth, probably because white-browed coucals fed their nestlings a larger proportion of frogs than insects. A food-rich habitat with a benign climate may be a necessary, but—perhaps unsurprisingly—is not a sufficient factor for the evolution of uniparental care. In combination with previous results (Goymann et al . 2015 J. Evol. Biol . 28 , 1335–1353 ( doi:10.1111/jeb.12657 )), these data suggest that white-browed coucals may cooperate in parental care, because they lack opportunities to become polygamous rather than because both parents were needed to successfully raise all offspring. Our case study supports recent theory suggesting that permissive environmental conditions in combination with a particular life history may induce sexual selection in females. A positive feedback loop among sexual selection, body size and adult sex-ratio may then stabilize reversed sex roles in competition and parental care.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document