Parental Care and Sexual Selection

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

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.

scholarly journals SEXUAL SELECTION DETERMINES PARENTAL CARE PATTERNS IN CICHLID FISHES

Evolution ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (8) ◽  
pp. 2015-2026 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Gonzalez-Voyer ◽  
John L. Fitzpatrick ◽  
Niclas Kolm
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Cichlid Fishes ◽  
Care Patterns

scholarly journals The evolution of sexual dimorphism in parasitic cuckoos: sexual selection or coevolution?

2007 ◽  
Vol 274 (1617) ◽  
pp. 1553-1560 ◽  
Author(s):  
O Krüger ◽  
N.B Davies ◽  
M.D Sorenson
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Sexual Dimorphism ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Brood Parasitism ◽  
Selection Pressure ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
Evolutionary Pathways ◽  
Common Situation

Sexual dimorphism is ubiquitous in animals and can result from selection pressure on one or both sexes. Sexual selection has become the predominant explanation for the evolution of sexual dimorphism, with strong selection on size-related mating success in males being the most common situation. The cuckoos (family Cuculidae) provide an exceptional case in which both sexes of many species are freed from the burden of parental care but where coevolution between parasitic cuckoos and their hosts also results in intense selection. Here, we show that size and plumage differences between the sexes in parasitic cuckoos are more likely the result of coevolution than sexual selection. While both sexes changed in size as brood parasitism evolved, we find no evidence for selection on males to become larger. Rather, our analysis indicates stronger selection on parasitic females to become smaller, resulting in a shift from dimorphism with larger females in cuckoos with parental care to dimorphism with larger males in parasitic species. In addition, the evolution of brood parasitism was associated with more cryptic plumage in both sexes, but especially in females, a result that contrasts with the strong plumage dimorphism seen in some other parasitic birds. Examination of the three independent origins of brood parasitism suggests that different parasitic cuckoo lineages followed divergent evolutionary pathways to successful brood parasitism. These results argue for the powerful role of parasite–host coevolution in shaping cuckoo life histories in general and sexual dimorphism in particular.

scholarly journals Positive feedback and alternative stable states in inbreeding, cooperation, sex roles and other evolutionary processes

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1586) ◽  
pp. 211-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jussi Lehtonen ◽  
Hanna Kokko
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Positive Feedback ◽  
Alternative Stable States ◽  
Operational Sex Ratio ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Systems Science ◽  
Stable States ◽  
Uniparental Care ◽  
The Relationship

A large proportion of studies in systems science focus on processes involving a mixture of positive and negative feedbacks, which are also common themes in evolutionary ecology. Examples of negative feedback are density dependence (population regulation) and frequency-dependent selection (polymorphisms). Positive feedback, in turn, plays a role in Fisherian ‘runaway’ sexual selection, the evolution of cooperation, selfing and inbreeding tolerance under purging of deleterious alleles, and the evolution of sex differences in parental care. All these examples feature self-reinforcing processes where the increase in the value of a trait selects for further increases, sometimes via a coevolutionary feedback loop with another trait. Positive feedback often leads to alternative stable states (evolutionary endpoints), making the interpretation of evolutionary predictions challenging. Here, we discuss conceptual issues such as the relationship between self-reinforcing selection and disruptive selection. We also present an extension of a previous model on parental care, focusing on the relationship between the operational sex ratio and sexual selection, and the influence of this relationship on the evolution of biparental or uniparental care.

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.

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.

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