Rearing success does not improve with apparent pair coordination in offspring provisioning
File(s)2019FrontEvoIhleetal.pdf (381.3 KB)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In species with biparental care, behavioral coordination in the provisioning of the progeny is hypothesized to increase the number of offspring that survive to independence. Coordination is often quantified by two metrics, alternation and synchrony. Turn-taking (leading to an alternation pattern) can result when one parent's investment strategy is based on the investment of its partner (i.e., conditional cooperation). This should increase the overall provisioning rate and improve offspring body condition. Synchrony might equalize food delivery among offspring and therefore decrease the variance in offspring body condition within the brood. Overall, offspring survival could be increased by parental coordination. Finally, pairs with low coordination, and with potentially lower reproductive success, are expected to be more likely to divorce. In this study, we use a dataset on 473 pairs of house sparrows in a natural insular population to test these hypotheses. We found no effect of the pair's apparent coordination on offspring condition, offspring survival, or divorce rate, questioning the adaptive significance of this behavior. We argue that, in this species, the detection of a higher frequency of alternation and synchrony, when compared to chance expectation, might be induced by the environment, rather than result from an emergent pair behavior selected for fitness benefits.
Date Issued
2019-10-30
Date Acceptance
2019-10-09
Citation
Frontiers in Ecology Evolution, 2019, 7, pp.1-9
ISSN
2296-701X
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Start Page
1
End Page
9
Journal / Book Title
Frontiers in Ecology Evolution
Volume
7
Copyright Statement
© 2019 Ihle, Pick, Winney, Nakagawa, Schroeder and Burke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
License URL
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000496957200001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Ecology
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
breeding success
house sparrow
divorce
fitness
pairbond
double hierarchical model
brood size
male age
CONDITIONAL COOPERATION
FITNESS CONSEQUENCES
PARENTAL CARE
WILD BIRD
SEX
NEST
POPULATION
PATTERNS
SURVIVAL
DIVORCE
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 405
Date Publish Online
2019-10-30