Keppner Eva M, Ayasse Manfred, Steiger Sandra
Institute for Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics Ulm University Ulm Germany.
Department of Evolutionary Animal Ecology University of Bayreuth Bayreuth Germany.
Ecol Evol. 2020 Mar 4;10(7):3535-3543. doi: 10.1002/ece3.6150. eCollection 2020 Apr.
The sharing of the same food source among parents and offspring can be a driver of the evolution of family life and parental care. However, if all family members desire the same meal, competitive situations can arise, especially if resource depletion is likely. When food is shared for reproduction and the raising of offspring, parents have to decide whether they should invest in self-maintenance or in their offspring and it is not entirely clear how these two strategies are balanced. In the burying beetle , parents care for their offspring either bi- or uniparentally at a vertebrate carcass as the sole food source. The question of whether biparental care in this species offers the offspring a better environment for development compared with uniparental care has been the subject of some debate. We tested the hypothesis that male contribution to biparental brood care has a beneficial effect on offspring fitness but that this effect can be masked because the male also feeds from the shared resource. We show that a mouse carcass prepared by two beetles is lighter compared with a carcass prepared by a single female beetle at the start of larval hatching and provisioning. This difference in carcass mass can influence offspring fitness when food availability is limited, supporting our hypothesis. Our results provide new insights into the possible evolutionary pathway of biparental care in this species of burying beetles.
父母与后代共享同一食物来源可能是家庭生活和父母照顾行为进化的一个驱动因素。然而，如果所有家庭成员都想要同一顿饭，就可能会出现竞争情况，尤其是在资源可能耗尽的时候。当为了繁殖和养育后代而共享食物时，父母必须决定是应该投资于自我维持还是投资于后代，而这两种策略如何平衡还不完全清楚。在埋葬虫中，父母会在脊椎动物尸体这一唯一食物来源处，以双亲或单亲的方式照顾它们的后代。与单亲照顾相比，该物种的双亲照顾是否能为后代提供更好的发育环境这一问题一直存在一些争议。我们测试了这样一个假设：雄性对双亲育雏的贡献对后代的适应性有有益影响，但这种影响可能会被掩盖，因为雄性也会从共享资源中获取食物。我们发现，与在幼虫孵化和喂养开始时由一只雌性甲虫准备的尸体相比，由两只甲虫准备的小鼠尸体更轻。当食物供应有限时，尸体质量的这种差异会影响后代的适应性，这支持了我们的假设。我们的研究结果为这种埋葬虫物种中双亲照顾行为可能的进化途径提供了新的见解。
