Brood size, food availability, and body size affects male care decisions and offspring performance

ABSTRACT: Abstract Parental care strategies do not only vary greatly across species, but also within species there can be substantial between‐ and within‐individual variation in parental care behavior. To better understand the evolution of care strategies, it is crucial to determine how and when parents modify their behavior in response to internal as well as environmental factors. Here, we investigated the effect of brood size, resource size and an individual's quality on care strategies of uniparental males and examined the downstream consequences on offspring performance in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. Burying beetles breed on small vertebrate cadavers and, on average, males invest much less in care than females. Nevertheless, we found that uniparentally caring males were responsi

SUBMITTER: Sahm J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10249043 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature