Abstract

A parent's nutritional state may influence its ability to provide care to offspring and ability to handle infections. In the broad-nosed pipefish, Syngnathus typhle, males care for their offspring ...

Highlights

  • Parental care promotes offspring development and increases offspring survival (Clutton-Brock, 1991; Klug & Bonsall, 2010; Kvarnemo, 2010), but often at a cost of parental survival and future reproductive success, as a result of reduced body condition or immune defence (Trivers, 1974; Clutton-Brock, 1991; Smith & Wootton, 1995; Zuk & Stoehr 2002)

  • This shows that males that survived had higher hepatosomatic index (HSI) than those that did not (Fig. 1), while feeding regime had no effect on male survival

  • Feeding regime overall had no significant effect on number of days until mating, number of eggs received, number of days brooding, HSI, or embryo mortality (MANOVA, Wilk’s lambda = 0.85, F6,62 = 1.82, P = 0.11)

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Summary

Introduction

Parental care promotes offspring development and increases offspring survival (Clutton-Brock, 1991; Klug & Bonsall, 2010; Kvarnemo, 2010), but often at a cost of parental survival and future reproductive success, as a result of reduced body condition or immune defence (Trivers, 1974; Clutton-Brock, 1991; Smith & Wootton, 1995; Zuk & Stoehr 2002). During selective events, such as a disease outbreak, a caring parent may adjust its care in order to survive the infection. The condition/ nutritional state of a parent can be manipulated by food provisioning or food deprivation and resource allocation and parent–offspring interactions can be affected and studied. For example: (1) in the Gulf pipefish (Syngnathus scovelli) pregnant fathers in a high food treatment invested both in current reproduction and in somatic growth (future reproduction), whereas

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