Abstract
For altricial mammalian species, early life social bonds are constructed principally between offspring and their mothers, and the mother-offspring relationship sets the trajectory for offspring bio-behavioral development. In the rare subset of monogamous and biparental species, offspring experience an expanded social network which includes a father. Accordingly, in biparental species fathers also have the potential to influence trajectories of offspring development. Previous semi-natural and laboratory study of one monogamous and biparental species, the prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster), has given insight into the role that mothers and fathers play in shaping behavioral phenotypes of offspring. Of particular interest is the influence of biparental care in the development of monogamous behavior in offspring. Here, we first briefly review that influence. We then present novel research which describes how parental investment in prairie voles changes across sequential litters of pups, and the extent to which it is coordinated between mothers and fathers. We use approximately 6 years of archival data on prairie vole parenting to investigate trajectories and inter-parent dynamics in prairie vole parenting. We use a series of latent growth models to assess the stability of parental investment across the first 4 l. Our findings suggest that prairie voles display sexually dimorphic patterns of change in parental behavior: mothers’ investment declines linearly whereas fathers’ pattern of change is characterized by initial decline between litters 1 and 2 with subsequent increase from litters 2 to 4. Our findings also support a conclusion that prairie vole paternal care may be better characterized as compensatory—that is, fathers may compensate for decline in maternal investment. Opposing trends in investment between mothers and fathers ultimately imply stability in offspring investment across sequential litters. These findings, combined with previous studies, generate a hypothesis that paternal compensation could play an important role in maintaining the development of monogamous behavioral phenotypes in individual offspring and across cohorts of those offspring. Understanding longitudinal and inter-individual dynamics of complex social behaviors is critical for the informed investigation of both proximate and ultimate mechanisms that may subserve these behaviors.
Highlights
Social bonds formed in early life are influential in the development of adult social behaviors; early life experiences have incredible potential to shape individual variation (Meaney, 2001)
This study explores the stability of parental care, a moderator of monogamous phenotypes, to better inform our understanding of prairie vole parenting as a process
Here, that prairie vole parenting is a process of change, rather than a constant
Summary
Social bonds formed in early life are influential in the development of adult social behaviors; early life experiences have incredible potential to shape individual variation (Meaney, 2001). Of particular importance to bio-behavioral development is the role of the mother and the social relationship between her and her offspring in altricial mammals. Biparental care is demonstrated in a range of mammals, including but not limited to rodents (e.g., prairie voles, California mice, whitefooted mice, etc.) (McGuire and Bemis, 2007), canids (e.g., Maned wolves, red foxes, African wild dogs, etc.) (Malcolm, 1985), and primates (e.g., titi monkeys, common marmoset, Goeldi’s monkey, humans, etc.) (Schradin et al, 2003; Fernandez-Duque et al, 2009; Bales and Jarcho, 2013). Arboreal New World monkeys, fathers play an important role in the transport of offspring (Tardif, 1994; Fernandez-Duque et al, 2009). The relative role of fathers can be quite extensive, such as in the case of the titi monkey (Callicebus moloch), in which fathers do the majority of infant transport and in which infants show extensive distress upon separation from the father, but not mother (Hoffman et al, 1995)
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