A sustained change in the supply of parental care causes adaptive evolution of offspring morphology.

ABSTRACT: Although cooperative social interactions within species are considered an important driver of evolutionary change, few studies have experimentally demonstrated that they cause adaptive evolution. Here we address this problem by studying the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. In this species, parents and larvae work together to obtain nourishment for larvae from the carrion breeding resource: parents feed larvae and larvae also self-feed. We established experimentally evolving populations in which we varied the assistance that parents provided for their offspring and investigated how offspring evolved in response. We show that in populations where parents predictably supplied more care, larval mandibles evolved to be smaller in relation to larval mass, and larvae were correspondingly

SUBMITTER: Jarrett BJM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6162320 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature