Abstract
Parental care is a defining feature of animal breeding systems. We now know that both basic life-history characteristics and ecological factors influence the evolution of care. However, relatively little is known about how these factors interact to influence the origin and maintenance of care. Here, we expand upon previous work and explore the relationship between basic life-history characteristics (stage-specific rates of mortality and maturation) and the fitness benefits associated with the origin and the maintenance of parental care for two broad ecological scenarios: the scenario in which egg survival is density dependent and the case in which adult survival is density dependent. Our findings suggest that high offspring need is likely critical in driving the origin, but not the maintenance, of parental care regardless of whether density dependence acts on egg or adult survival. In general, parental care is more likely to result in greater fitness benefits when baseline adult mortality is low if 1) egg survival is density dependent or 2) adult mortality is density dependent and mutant density is relatively high. When density dependence acts on egg mortality, low rates of egg maturation and high egg densities are less likely to lead to strong fitness benefits of care. However, when density dependence acts on adult mortality, high levels of egg maturation and increasing adult densities are less likely to maintain care. Juvenile survival has relatively little, if any, effect on the origin and maintenance of egg-only care. More generally, our results suggest that the evolution of parental care will be influenced by an organism’s entire life history characteristics, the stage at which density dependence acts, and whether care is originating or being maintained.
Highlights
Parental care is a key life-history trait that influences sex roles, mating systems, and population dynamics [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
We focus on egg and adult mortality, as we consider this a feasible starting point to begin exploring the effects of stagespecific density dependence on the evolution of parental care
The evolution of parental care is influenced by basic life-history traits (Figs 1–4), but the specific life-history characteristics that lead to strongest fitness gains for care depend on 1) whether the origin or maintenance of care is being considered and 2) the life-history stage that density dependence acts on, in some cases (Figs 1–4; Table 2)
Summary
Parental care is a key life-history trait that influences sex roles, mating systems, and population dynamics [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. The Origin and Maintenance of Parental Care evolve when the fitness benefits of care outweigh the costs. Benefits of parental care in nature are diverse and can be associated with increased offspring size, increased offspring survival, increased offspring mating success, and/or altered offspring development [7, 12, 13]. Parental care is associated with costs to parents, which can include a reduction in potential mating opportunities, survival, and fecundity [12, 14]
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