Paul Manabi, Sau Shubhra, Nandi Anjan K, Bhadra Anindita
Behaviour and Ecology Lab, Department of Biological Sciences , Indian Institute of Science Education and Research , Kolkata , India.
Department of Physical Sciences , Indian Institute of Science Education and Research , Kolkata , India.
R Soc Open Sci. 2017 Jan 11;4(1):160583. doi: 10.1098/rsos.160583. eCollection 2017 Jan.
Mammalian offspring require parental care, at least in the form of nursing during their early development. While mothers need to invest considerable time and energy in ensuring the survival of their current offspring, they also need to optimize their investment in one batch of offspring in order to ensure future reproduction and hence lifetime reproductive success. Free-ranging dogs live in small social groups, mate promiscuously and lack the cooperative breeding biology of other group-living canids. They face high early-life mortality, which in turn reduces fitness benefits of the mother from a batch of pups. We carried out a field-based study on free-ranging dogs in India to understand the nature of maternal care. Our analysis reveals that mothers reduce investment in energy-intensive active care and increase passive care as the pups grow older, thereby keeping overall levels of care more or less constant over pup age. Using the patterns of mother-pup interactions, we define the different phases of maternal care behaviour.
哺乳动物的后代需要父母的照顾，至少在其早期发育阶段需要以哺乳的形式。母亲们需要投入大量的时间和精力来确保当前后代的存活，同时，她们也需要优化对一批后代的投入，以确保未来的繁殖，从而实现终生繁殖成功。散养的狗生活在小群体中，进行滥交交配，缺乏其他群居犬科动物的合作繁殖生物学特征。它们面临着较高的早期死亡率，这反过来又降低了母亲从一窝幼犬中获得的适应性益处。我们在印度对散养狗进行了一项实地研究，以了解母性照顾的本质。我们的分析表明，随着幼犬长大，母亲会减少对高能量消耗的主动照顾的投入，增加被动照顾，从而使照顾的总体水平在幼犬成长过程中或多或少保持恒定。利用母婴互动模式，我们定义了母性照顾行为的不同阶段。
