Sex-specific offspring discrimination reflects respective risks and costs of misdirected care in a poison frog.

ABSTRACT: The ability to differentiate between one's own and foreign offspring ensures the exclusive allocation of costly parental care to only related progeny. The selective pressure to evolve offspring discrimination strategies is largely shaped by the likelihood and costs of offspring confusion. We hypothesize that males and females with different reproductive and spatial behaviours face different risks of confusing their own with others' offspring, and this should favour differential offspring discrimination strategies in the two sexes. In the brilliant-thighed poison frog, Allobates femoralis, males and females are highly polygamous, terrestrial clutches are laid in male territories and females abandon the clutch after oviposition. We investigated whether males and females differentiate

SUBMITTER: Ringler E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5321237 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature