Parental Care and Investment

Lutz Fromhage, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland

Published online: March 2017

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0021907.pub2

Abstract

Parental care is common throughout the animal kingdom, and much variation exists among species in how, and how much, parents care for their offspring. In most species, females care more; in others, males care more and in some, caring is more or less equally shared between the sexes. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain patterns of parental care within and among species. These hypotheses invoke factors such as the relatedness (parentage certainty) of each parent to the brood; the sex ratio at maturation; the strength of sexual selection faced by each sex and the exact nature of any trade‐offs between caring and other activities. Work is still ongoing to develop an overarching hypothesis to explain the various patterns observed.

Key Concepts

  • Among species there is much variation in how, and how much, parents care for their offspring.
  • Differences between the sexes in parental care can evolve if one sex has more to gain and/or less to lose by providing care.
  • Coevolution between parental care and sexually selected traits may amplify small initial sex differences in caring over time.
  • Individual decisions on the optimal parental investment can lead to conflict between parents, as well as between parents and offspring.
  • In some species, care of the offspring is not the exclusive responsibility of the parents but is shared among members of a group, termed cooperative breeding. In other species, adults sometimes take care of unrelated offspring, either willingly (as in adoptions) or unwillingly (as in brood parasitism).
  • Within species, parents sometimes adjust the amount of investment in offspring based on cues from their partner or from the offspring themselves.

Keywords: parental investment; parental care; sexual selection; mating system; parent–offspring conflict

Figure 1. Factors affecting the benefit and cost of care for a parent. A mutant parent providing more than the usual amount of care to a given brood is favoured by selection if the associated fitness benefit is greater than the cost. Black arrows indicate causal effects of the focal parent's behavioural change and are marked at their base by ‘+′ (or ‘−′) if the behavioural change increases (decreases) the quantity to which they point. Blue arrows show how other factors modify these causal effects: when fusing with black arrows, they indicate that the quantity represented by the blue arrow strengthens the causal effect represented by the black arrow. Blue arrows marked at their base by ‘+′ (or ‘−′) indicate that the quantity from which they start increases (decreases) the quantity to which they point. Sex differences in the benefit of care may arise because of parentage certainty or care ability. Sex differences in the cost of care may arise because sexually selected traits put one sex at greater risk to die when caring; or because parents of one sex have higher future fitness expectations (hence having ‘more to lose’ in the event of their death) or because caring affects mating success or body condition in ways that have different fitness consequences for each sex.
close

References

Armstrong MJ and Shelton PA (1990) Clupeoid life‐history styles in variable environments. Environmental Biology of Fishes 28: 77–85.

Balcombe JP (1990) Vocal recognition of pups by mother Mexican free‐tailed bats, Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana. Animal Behaviour 39: 960–966.

Balshine S (2012) Patterns of parental care in vertebrates. In: Royle NJ, Smiseth PT and Kölliker M (eds) The Evolution of Parental Care, pp. 62–81. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Barta Z, Szekely T, Liker A and Harrison F (2014) Social role specialization promotes cooperation between parents. American Naturalist 183: 747–761.

Bateman AJ (1948) Intra‐sexual selection in Drosophila. Heredity 2: 349–368.

Beecher M and Stoddard P (1990) The role of bird song and calls in individual recognition: contrasting field and laboratory perspectives. In: Stebbins W and Berkeley A (eds) Comparative Perception, vol. 2, pp. 375–408. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Caro SM, Griffin AS, Hinde CA and West SA (2016) Unpredictable environments lead to the evolution of parental neglect in birds. Nature Communications 7: 1–10.

Cunningham EJA and Russell AF (2000) Egg investment is influenced by male attractiveness in the mallard. Nature 404: 74–77.

Clutton‐Brock TH (1991) The Evolution of Parental Care. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Dawkins R and Carlisle TR (1976) Parental investment, mate desertion and a fallacy. Nature 262: 131–133.

Dentressangle F, Boeck L and Torres R (2008) Maternal investment in eggs is affected by male feet colour and breeding conditions in the blue‐footed booby, Sula nebouxii. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 62: 1899–1908.

Evans TA, Wallis EJ and Elgar MA (1995) Making a meal of mother. Nature 376: 299.

Fromhage L and Jennions MD (2016) Coevolution of parental investment and sexually selected traits drives sex‐role divergence. Nature Communications 7: 12517.

Fromhage L, Jennions MD and Kokko H (2016) The evolution of sex roles in mate‐searching. Evolution 70: 617–624.

Ghalambor C and Martin T (2001) Fecundity‐survival trade‐offs and parental risk‐taking in birds. Science 292: 494–497.

Gittleman JL (1994) Female brain size and parental care in carnivores. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 91: 5495–5497.

Gonzalez‐Voyer A, Winberg S and Kolm N (2009) Social fishes and single mothers: brain evolution in African cichlids. Proceedings of the Biological Sciences 276: 161–167.

Gross MR and Sargent RC (1985) The evolution of male and female parental care in fishes. American Zoologist 25: 807–822.

Kahn AT, Schwanz LE and Kokko H (2013) Paternity protection can provide a kick‐start for the evolution of male‐only parental care. Evolution 67: 2207–2217.

Kalmbach E (2006) Why do goose parents adopt unrelated goslings? A review of hypotheses and empirical evidence, and new research questions. Ibis (London 1859) 148: 66–78.

Kilner RM (2002) The evolution of complex begging displays. In: Wright J and Leonard ML (eds) The Evolution of Begging: Competition Cooperation and Communication, pp. 87–106. London, UK: Kluwer.

Klug H, Alonzo SH and Bonsall MB (2012) Theoretical foundations of parental care. In: Royle N, Smiseth P and Kölliker M (eds) The Evolution of Parental Care, pp. 21–39. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Kokko H and Jennions MD (2008) Parental investment, sexual selection and sex ratios. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 21: 919–948.

Kokko H and Jennions MD (2012) Sex differences in parental care. In: Royle NJ, Smiseth PT and Kölliker M (eds) The Evolution of Parental Care, pp. 101–116. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Kokko H, Klug H and Jennions MD (2012) Unifying cornerstones of sexual selection: operational sex ratio, Bateman gradient and the scope for competitive investment. Ecology Letters 15: 1340–1351.

Kolm N (2001) Females produce larger eggs for large males in a paternal mouthbrooding fish. Proceedings of the Biological Sciences 268: 2229–2234.

Kolm N, Goodwin NB, Balshine S and Reynolds JD (2006) Life history evolution in cichlids 1: revisiting the evolution of life histories in relation to parental care. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19: 66–75.

Krüger O and Davies NB (2002) The evolution of cuckoo parasitism: a comparative analysis. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Part B 269: 375–381.

Kupfer A, Muller H, Antoniazzi MM, et al. (2006) Parental investment by skin feeding in a caecilian amphibian. Nature 440: 926–929.

Kvarnemo C (2006) Evolution and maintenance of male care: is increased paternity a neglected benefit of care? Behavioural Ecology 17: 144–148.

Langmore NE, Maurer G, Adcock GJ and Kilner RM (2008) Socially acquired host‐specific mimicry and the evolution of host races in Horsfield's bronze‐cuckoo Chalcites basalis. Evolution 62: 1689–1699.

Lehtonen J, Parker GA and Schärer L (2016) Why anisogamy drives ancestral sex roles. Evolution 70: 1129–1135.

Lindström K, Mary CMS and Pampoulie C (2006) Sexual selection for male parental care in the sand goby, Pomatoschistus minutus. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 60: 46–51.

MacFarlane GR, Blomberg SP and Vasey PL (2010) Homosexual behaviour in birds: frequency of expression is related to parental care disparity between the sexes. Animal Behaviour 80: 375–390.

McNamara J and Wolf M (2015) Sexual conflict over parental care promotes the evolution of sex differences in care and the ability to care. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282: 20142752.

Møller AP and Cuervo JJ (2000) The evolution of paternity and paternal care in birds. Behavioural Ecology 11: 472–485.

Nazareth TM and Machado G (2010) Mating system and exclusive postzygotic paternal care in a Neotropical harvestman (Arachnida: Opiliones). Animal Behaviour 79: 547–554.

Queller DC (1997) Why do females care more than males? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 264: 1555–1557.

Reynolds JD and Jones JC (1999) Female preference for preferred males is reversed under low oxygen conditions in the common goby (Pomatoschistus microps). Behavioural Ecology 10: 149–154.

Reynolds JD, Goodwin NB and Freckleton RP (2002) Evolutionary transitions in parental care and live bearing in vertebrates. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 357: 269–281.

Royle NJ, Smiseth PT and Kölliker M (eds) (2012) The Evolution of Parental Care. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Schärer L, Rowe L and Arnqvist G (2012) Anisogamy, chance and the evolution of sex roles. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 27: 260–264.

Smiseth PT, Kölliker M and Royle NJ (2012) What is parental care? In: Royle N, Smiseth P and Kölliker M (eds) The Evolution of Parental Care, pp. 1–20. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Tallamy D (2000) Sexual selection and the evolution of exclusive paternal care in arthropods. Animal Behaviour 60: 559–567.

Trivers RL (1972) Parental investment and sexual selection. In: Campbell B (ed) Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man, pp. 1871–1971. Chicago, IL: Aldine.

Trumbo S (2012) Patterns of parental care in invertebrates. In: Royle NJ, Smiseth PT and Kölliker M (eds) The Evolution of Parental Care, pp. 62–81. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Zeh DW and Smith RL (1985) Paternal investment by terrestrial arthropods. American Zoologist 25: 785–805.

Further Reading

Clutton‐Brock TH (1991) The Evolution of Parental Care. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Royle NJ, Smiseth PT and Kölliker M (2012) The Evolution of Parental Care. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Related Sub-Topics:

Behavioural Ecology | Life History and Reproduction | Adaptive Evolution | Evolutionary Ecology | Evolution: Theories and Ideas
Contact Editor close
Submit a note to the editor about this article by filling in the form below.

* Required Field

Article Title: Parental Care and Investment
 
How to Cite close
Fromhage, Lutz(Mar 2017) Parental Care and Investment. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0021907.pub2]