Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Medical University Vienna, University of Vienna, Veterinaerplatz 1, A- 1210 Vienna, Austria.
University of Vienna, Department of Integrative Zoology, Althanstrasse 14, A-1090 Vienna, Austria.
Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 6;7:43544. doi: 10.1038/srep43544.
Systematic infanticide of unrelated young has been reported in several animal taxa. Particular attention has been given to carnivores and primates, where infanticide is a sexually selected strategy of males to gain increased access to female mating partners. Cannibals must ensure avoiding their own offspring and targeting only unrelated young. Therefore, decision rules are needed to mediate parental and cannibalistic behaviour. Here we show experimentally that male poison frogs adjust their parental responses - care or infanticide - towards unrelated clutches according to their territorial status. Male frogs followed the simple rule 'care for any clutch' inside their territory, but immediately switched to cannibalism when establishing a new territory. This demonstrates that simple cognitive rules can mediate complex behaviours such as parental care, and that care and cannibalism are antagonistically linked. Non-parental infanticide is mediated by territorial cues and presumably serves to prevent misdirected care in this poison frog. Our results thus prompt a re-consideration of evolutionary and causal aspects of parental decision making, by suggesting that selective infanticide of unrelated young may generally become adaptive when the risks and costs of misdirected care are high.
系统的杀婴行为在多个动物类群中都有报道。人们特别关注食肉动物和灵长类动物，在这些动物中，杀婴是雄性通过性选择来增加与雌性交配机会的策略。食同类者必须确保避免自己的后代，并只针对无关的幼崽。因此，需要决策规则来调解亲代和食同类者的行为。在这里，我们通过实验表明，雄性毒蛙会根据其领地地位来调整其对无关卵群的亲代反应——照顾或杀婴。雄性青蛙遵循简单的规则“照顾任何卵群”，在其领地内，但一旦建立新的领地，就会立即转向食同类行为。这表明简单的认知规则可以调节复杂的行为，如亲代照顾，并且照顾和食同类行为是对立的。非亲代的杀婴行为是由领地线索介导的，可能有助于防止这种毒蛙中错误的亲代照顾。因此，我们的结果促使人们重新考虑亲代决策的进化和因果方面，因为当错误的亲代照顾的风险和成本很高时，选择地杀死无关的幼崽可能通常会变得适应。
