Using Experimental Evolution to Study Adaptations for Life within the Family.

ABSTRACT: Parents of many species provision their young, and the extent of parental provisioning constitutes a major component of the offspring's social environment. Thus, a change in parental provisioning can alter selection on offspring, resulting in the coevolution of parental and offspring traits. Although this reasoning is central to our evolutionary understanding of family life, there is little direct evidence that selection by parents causes evolutionary change in their offspring. Here we use experimental evolution to examine how populations of burying beetles adapt to a change in posthatching parental provisioning. We measured the performance of larvae descended from lab populations that had been maintained with and without posthatching parental care (Full Care and No Care populations). We f

SUBMITTER: Schrader M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4497813 | biostudies-literature | 2015 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature