title: Fruiting Season Length Restricts Global Distribution of Female-Only Parental Care in Frugivorous Passerine Birds.
abstract: Food availability is known to influence parental care and mating systems in passerine birds. Altricial chicks make uni-parental care particularly demanding for passerines and parental investment is known to increase with decreasing food availability. We expect this to limit uni-parental passerines to habitats with the most consistent food availability. In passerine birds, species having uni-parental care are primarily female-only parental care (female-only care) and most passerine birds with female-only care are frugivores. We predict that frugivorous passerines with female-only care should be restricted to the most stable habitats characterized by longer fruiting season length. At a global scale, female-only care frugivores were distributed in areas with significantly longer fruiting seasons than non-female-only care frugivores. Female-only care species richness had a stronger spatial relationship with longer fruiting season than non-female-only care species richness. Verifying the lack of a phylogenetic signal driving this pattern, our findings indicate that the geographic distribution of female-only care, a geographically and phylogenetically widespread parental care system, is restricted by an extrinsic factor: fruiting season length. This reinstates the importance of food availability on the evolution and maintenance of parental care systems in passerine birds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.|Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Sahas
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Barve
authors.affiliation: Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Frank A
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: La Sorte
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003710:Demography; D017753:Ecosystem; D005260:Female; D005523:Food Supply; D005638:Fruit; D060434:Herbivory; D008297:Male; D046109:Passeriformes; D012098:Reproduction / Q000502:physiology; D012621:Seasons; D012737:Sex Factors