Sexual Conflict, Ecology, and Breeding Systems in Shorebirds

Abstract

Evolutionary biologists strive to understand the immense variation in animals' breeding systems. Shorebirds represent an ideal model system for this endeavor, because they exhibit diverse breeding systems that include monogamy, with the parents cooperating to rear the young; and polygamy by the male, the female, or both parents, with one parent taking full responsibility for incubating the eggs and rearing the young. Recent experimental manipulations, mathematical models, and phylogenetic analyses reveal that evolutionary pressures may diverge as they act on mated pairs of shorebirds, favoring one parent at a cost to the other. We argue that different reproductive payoffs for the male and the female have had fundamental implications for the evolution of diverse breeding systems.