Sense and sensitivity: responsiveness to offspring signals varies with the parents' potential to breed again

Abstract

How sensitive should parents be to the demands of their young? Offspring are under selection to seek more investment than is optimal for parents to supply, which makes parents vulnerable to losing future fitness by responding to manipulative displays. Yet, parents cannot afford to ignore begging and risk allocating resources inefficiently. Here, we show that parents may solve this problem by adjusting their sensitivity to begging behaviour in relation to their own likelihood of breeding again, a factor largely neglected in previous analyses of parent-offspring interactions. In two carotenoid-supplementation experiments on a New Zealand passerine, the hihi Notiomystis cincta, we supplemented adults to enhance their propensity to breed again, and supplemented entire broods to increase their mouth colour, thus enhancing their solicitation display. We found that adults that attempted two breeding attempts a season were largely insensitive to the experimentally carotenoid-rich gapes of their brood, whereas those that bred just once responded by increasing their rate of provisioning at the nest. Our results show that parents can strategically vary their sensitivity to begging in relation to their future reproductive potential. By restricting opportunities for offspring to influence provisioning decisions, parents greatly limit the potential for offspring to win parent-offspring conflict.