Maternal effects and female manipulation: a response to comments on Paquet and Smiseth

Abstract

about whether or not to help, which is likely to be influenced by lack of additional breeding opportunities. Alonzo (2016) finds our review a useful generalization of the manipulating androgens hypothesis (MAH) and argues that further work is needed to understand how sexual conflict shapes female life histories and how plasticity in maternal effects evolve in response to plasticity in male care and vice versa. We agree and emphasize that, because both the MAH and our review are based on verbal arguments, there is a need for more formal theoretical models on the coevolution of maternal effects and male (and female) parental care. Alonzo also argues that manipulation only would work in the short term as males should evolve a behavioral reaction that is adaptive from their perspective. We agree with this argument when applied to manipulation by deception. However, manipulation by incentivization could work in the long term because males make an optimal decision given the specific benefits and/or costs of care. Incentivization may provide an evolutionarily stable mechanism for female manipulation due to an asymmetry between the sexes with females making an initial decision adjusting the offspring’s phenotype, thereby moderating the benefit and/or cost functions of care that influences the male’s subsequent decision. Thus, even though males adjust their decision in a way that is optimal to them given the specific cost and benefit functions, their fitness might still be lower than it would have been in the absence of any female adjustment of the offspring’s phenotype.