Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Royal Society Open Science
Publication Date
Summer 6-20-2018
Keywords
parent–offspring interactions, coevolution, burying beetles, Nicrophorus, cross-fostering, brood parasitism
Abstract
In animal families, parents are expected to adapt to their offspring's traits, and offspring, in turn, are expected to adapt to the environment circumscribed by their parents. However, whether such coevolutionary trajectories differ between closely related species is poorly understood. Here, we employ interspecific cross-fostering in three species of burying beetles, Nicrophorus orbicollis, Nicrophorus pustulatus and Nicrophorus vespilloides, to test for divergent co-adaptation among species with different degrees of offspring dependency on parental care, and to test whether they are able to discriminate against interspecific parasites. We found that offspring survival was always higher when offspring were reared by conspecific rather than heterospecific parents. In the case of N. orbicollis raising N. pustulatus, none of the larvae survived. Overall, these results indicate that parent and offspring traits have diverged between species, and that the differential survival of conspecific and heterospecific larvae is because of improper matching of co-adapted traits, or, in the case of N. orbicollis with larval N. pustulatus, because of selection on parents to recognize and destroy interspecific brood parasites. We suggest that burying beetles experiencing a high risk of brood parasitism have evolved direct recognition mechanisms that enable them to selectively kill larvae of potential brood parasites.
Funding Source
This study was funded by a grant (STE 1874/6-1 and STE 1874/7-1) from the German Research Foundation (DFG), a grant from the National Science Foundation (IOS 16-54028) and by an Erasmus Traineeship provided to E.R.d.l.T.
Recommended Citation
Capodeanu-Nägler A, Ruizde la Torre E, Eggert A-K, Sakaluk SK, Steiger S.2018 Divergent coevolutionary trajectories inparent–offspring interactions anddiscrimination against brood parasitesrevealed by interspecific cross-fostering.R. Soc. open sci. 5: 180189.http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180189
DOI
10.1098/rsos.180189
Comments
First published in Royal Society Open Science (2018): http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180189/
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Supplementary: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4127363