Abstract
Parental decisions in animals are often context‐dependent and shaped by fitness trade‐offs between parents and offspring. For example, the selection of breeding habitats can considerably impact the fitness of both offspring and parents, and therefore, parents should carefully weigh the costs and benefits of available options for their current and future reproductive success. Here, we show that resource‐use preferences are shaped by a trade‐off between parental effort and offspring safety in a tadpole‐transporting frog. In a large‐scale in situ experiment, we investigated decision strategies across an entire population of poison frogs that distribute their tadpoles across multiple water bodies. Pool use followed a dynamic and sequential selection process, and transportation became more efficient over time. Our results point to a complex suite of environmental variables that are considered during offspring deposition, which necessitates a highly dynamic and flexible decision‐making process in tadpole‐transporting frogs.
Highlights
How animals use resources is constrained by the distribution of resources in space and time (Bell, 1991)
Individual and consensus decision-making have been studied in a variety of taxa (McFarland, 1977), with a strong focus on mating (Rosenthal, 2017) and foraging strategies (O’Brien, Browman, & Evans, 1990), but decision-making during parental care has previously received less attention
The use of novel methods and statistical tools shed light on the interactions of biotic and abiotic factors and the hierarchical decision patterns utilized by this species during tadpole transport
Summary
How animals use resources is constrained by the distribution of resources in space and time (Bell, 1991). The costs of the acquisition and exploitation of a specific resource, in terms of energy expenditure and time spent, will increase with decreasing predictability and availability, and with. Increasing demand and competition, and these costs drive the evolution of optimal resource-use strategies (Bell, 1991). Individual and consensus decision-making have been studied in a variety of taxa (McFarland, 1977), with a strong focus on mating (Rosenthal, 2017) and foraging strategies (O’Brien, Browman, & Evans, 1990), but decision-making during parental care has previously received less attention (but see Neff, 2003; Ringler, Pasukonis, et al, 2015; Ringler, Ho€dl, & Ringler, 2015; Zo€ttl, Chapuis, Freiburghaus, & Taborsky, 2013)
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