Flexible communication within bird families: the consequences of behavioral plasticity for parent-offspring coadaptation
| Autor: | Nolwenn Fresneau, Wendt Müller |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Offspring parental care Biology 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences 03 medical and health sciences Behavioral plasticity Begging begging Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Coevolution parent–offspring conflict Serinus canaria 030304 developmental biology Nature and Landscape Conservation Original Research 0303 health sciences Ecology Provisioning Parent offspring Chemistry Evolutionary biology coevolution Parent–offspring conflict Paternal care |
| Zdroj: | Ecology and evolution Ecology and Evolution |
| ISSN: | 2045-7758 |
| Popis: | Offspring are selected to demand more resources than what is optimal for their parents to provide, which results in a complex and dynamic interplay during parental care. Parent-offspring communication often involves conspicuous begging by the offspring which triggers a parental response, typically the transfer of food. So begging and parental provisioning reciprocally influence each other and are therefore expected to coevolve. There is indeed empirical evidence for covariation of offspring begging and parental provisioning at the phenotypic level. However, whether this reflects genetic correlations of mean levels of behaviors or a covariation of the slopes of offspring demand and parental supply functions (= behavioral plasticity) is not known. The latter has gone rather unnoticed-despite the obvious dynamics of parent-offspring communication. In this study, we measured parental provisioning and begging behavior at two different hunger levels using canaries (Serinus canaria) as a model species. This enabled us to simultaneously study the plastic responses of the parents and the offspring to changes in offspring need. We first tested whether parent and offspring behaviors covary phenotypically. Then, using a covariance partitioning approach, we estimated whether the covariance predominantly occurred at a between-nest level (i.e., indicating a fixed strategy) or at a within-nest level (i.e., reflecting a flexible strategy). We found positive phenotypic covariation of offspring begging and parental provisioning, confirming previous evidence. Yet, this phenotypic covariation was mainly driven by a covariance at the within-nest level. That is parental and offspring behaviors covary because of a plastic behavioral coadjustment, indicating that behavioral plasticity could be a main driver of parent-offspring coadaptation. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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