Flexible communication within bird families-The consequences of behavioral plasticity for parent-offspring coadaptation.

ABSTRACT: Offspring are selected to demand more resources than what is optimal for their parents to provide, which results in a complex and dynamic interplay during parental care. Parent-offspring communication often involves conspicuous begging by the offspring which triggers a parental response, typically the transfer of food. So begging and parental provisioning reciprocally influence each other and are therefore expected to coevolve. There is indeed empirical evidence for covariation of offspring begging and parental provisioning at the phenotypic level. However, whether this reflects genetic correlations of mean levels of behaviors or a covariation of the slopes of offspring demand and parental supply functions (= behavioral plasticity) is not known. The latter has gone rather unnoticed-despite

SUBMITTER: Fresneau N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6342095 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature