scholarly journals Digest: Using transcriptomics to map parental care behavior in burying beetles*

Evolution ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (8) ◽  
pp. 2132-2133
Author(s):  
Peter J. Flynn
Ethology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle A. Fetherston ◽  
Michelle Pellissier Scott ◽  
James F. A. Traniello

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (48) ◽  
pp. e2102450118
Author(s):  
Ana Duarte ◽  
Darren Rebar ◽  
Allysa C. Hallett ◽  
Benjamin J. M. Jarrett ◽  
Rebecca M. Kilner

Parental care can be partitioned into traits that involve direct engagement with offspring and traits that are expressed as an extended phenotype and influence the developmental environment, such as constructing a nursery. Here, we use experimental evolution to test whether parents can evolve modifications in nursery construction when they are experimentally prevented from supplying care directly to offspring. We exposed replicate experimental populations of burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) to different regimes of posthatching care by allowing larvae to develop in the presence (Full Care) or absence of parents (No Care). After only 13 generations of experimental evolution, we found an adaptive evolutionary increase in the pace at which parents in the No Care populations converted a dead body into a carrion nest for larvae. Cross-fostering experiments further revealed that No Care larvae performed better on a carrion nest prepared by No Care parents than did Full Care larvae. We conclude that parents construct the nursery environment in relation to their effectiveness at supplying care directly, after offspring are born. When direct care is prevented entirely, they evolve to make compensatory adjustments to the nursery in which their young will develop. The rapid evolutionary change observed in our experiments suggests there is considerable standing genetic variation for parental care traits in natural burying beetle populations—for reasons that remain unclear.


2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (12) ◽  
pp. 1933-1943 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Wetzel ◽  
Margret I. Hatch ◽  
David F. Westneat

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mónica Sandra IGLESIAS ◽  
Francisco Antonio CRESPO ◽  
Alejandra del Carmen VALVERDE

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Capodeanu-Nägler ◽  
Eva M. Keppner ◽  
Heiko Vogel ◽  
Manfred Ayasse ◽  
Anne-Katrin Eggert ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
C. D. Suski ◽  
J. H. Svec ◽  
J. B. Ludden ◽  
F. J. S. Phelan ◽  
D. P. Philipp

PLoS ONE ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. e0129929 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Schulte ◽  
Martin Krauss ◽  
Stefan Lötters ◽  
Tobias Schulze ◽  
Werner Brack

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1885) ◽  
pp. 20181452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. M. Jarrett ◽  
Darren Rebar ◽  
Hannah B. Haynes ◽  
Miranda R. Leaf ◽  
Chay Halliwell ◽  
...  

Interactions among siblings are finely balanced between rivalry and cooperation, but the factors that tip the balance towards cooperation are incompletely understood. Previous observations of insect species suggest that (i) sibling cooperation is more likely when siblings hatch at the same time, and (ii) this is more common when parents provide little to no care. In this paper, we tested these ideas experimentally with the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides . Burying beetles convert the body of a small dead vertebrate into an edible nest for their larvae, and provision and guard their young after hatching. In our first experiment, we simulated synchronous or asynchronous hatching by adding larvae at different intervals to the carrion-breeding resource. We found that ‘synchronously’ hatched broods survived better than ‘asynchronously’ hatched broods, probably because ‘synchronous hatching’ generated larger teams of larvae, that together worked more effectively to penetrate the carrion nest and feed upon it. In our second experiment, we measured the synchronicity of hatching in experimental populations that had evolved for 22 generations without any post-hatching care, and control populations that had evolved in parallel with post-hatching care. We found that larvae were more likely to hatch earlier, and at the same time as their broodmates, in the experimental populations that evolved without post-hatching care. We suggest that synchronous hatching enables offspring to help each other when parents are not present to provide care. However, we also suggest that greater levels of cooperation among siblings cannot compensate fully for the loss of parental care.


Chemoecology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Katharina C. Engel ◽  
Wenbe Hwang ◽  
Sandra Steiger

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