Abstract
Many organisms have evolved adaptations to increase the odds of survival of their offspring. Parental care has evolved several times in animals including ectotherms. In amphibians, ~ 10% of species exhibit parental care. Among these, poison frogs (Dendrobatidae) are well-known for their extensive care, which includes egg guarding, larval transport, and specialized tadpole provisioning with trophic eggs. At least one third of dendrobatids displaying aposematism by exhibiting warning coloration that informs potential predators about the presence of defensive skin toxins. Aposematism has a central role in poison frog diversification, including diet specialization, and visual and acoustic communication; and it is thought to have impacted their reproductive biology as well. We tested the latter association using multivariate phylogenetic methods at the family level. Our results show complex relationships between aposematism and certain aspects of the reproductive biology in dendrobatids. In particular, aposematic species tend to use more specialized tadpole-deposition sites, such as phytotelmata, and ferry fewer tadpoles than non-aposematic species. We propose that aposematism may have facilitated the diversification of microhabitat use in dendrobatids in the context of reproduction. Furthermore, the use of resource-limited tadpole-deposition environments may have evolved in tandem with an optimal reproductive strategy characterized by few offspring, biparental care, and female provisioning of food in the form of unfertilized eggs. We also found that in phytotelm-breeders, the rate of transition from cryptic to aposematic phenotype is 17 to 19 times higher than vice versa. Therefore, we infer that the aposematism in dendrobatids might serve as an umbrella trait for the evolution and maintenance of their complex offspring-caring activities.
Highlights
Many organisms have evolved adaptations to increase the odds of survival of their offspring
We found no evidence of a direct relationship between aposematism and offspring morphological traits, but found that aposematic species tend to use more specialized tadpole-rearing sites, and ferry fewer tadpoles than non-aposematic species
We found males to be the caregiver in most cases (92 species), and ancestral reconstructions support this as the ancestral condition in Dendrobatidae; female care (10 species) evolved independently at least two times, once within the genus Colostethus and once in the genus Dendrobates sensu lato (Tables 1, 2, Fig. 2B)
Summary
Many organisms have evolved adaptations to increase the odds of survival of their offspring. These strategies commonly include elaborate nest building[3,4], costly periodic food provisioning[5,6] and aggressive defense of their progeny[7] These adaptions have evolved independently several times across vertebrates, and have been shown to increase the likelihood of offspring reaching reproductive age. On the opposite side of the parental care spectrum, species with elaborate and prolonged care of their young (e.g., brood attendance and provisioning) aim their care at a small number of high-quality offspring whose survival is significantly increased by a consistent input of food (energy) and protection during early development Such behaviors are costly in terms of self-maintenance and the loss of future reproductive e vents[1,2,13,15].
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