Stridulation is unimportant for effective parental care in two species of burying beetle

Abstract

1. Communication among family members is often essential for navigating the social and trophic interactions that arise during parental care. In insects, this communication is often accomplished via pheromonal signals. However, some insects also produce acoustic signals (stridulations) during parental care.2. Burying beetles (Nicrophorus spp) audibly stridulate during mating and parental care and several studies have suggested that stridulation is an important form of communication between family members. Experimental studies have generally supported a role of stridulation in Nicrophorus parental care: preventing stridulation or changing the vibrational properties of stridulation generally reduces parental performance. However, some of these previous experiments are difficult to interpret and the importance of this form of communication in burying beetles is still unclear.3. Here we describe experiments involving two Nicrophorus species (N. vespilloides and N. orbicollis) in which we used a minimally invasive phenotypic manipulation to test whether stridulation is necessary for effective parental care. Our phenotypic manipulation rendered the both species silent; however, it had no detectable impact on parental performance in either species.4. Our results suggest that stridulation does not play an important role in mating or the coordination of parental care in at least two Nicrophorus species, casting doubt upon a long‐assumed function of stridulation in the genus.