title: From facultative to obligatory parental care: Interspecific variation in offspring dependency on post-hatching care in burying beetles.
abstract: Studies on the evolution of parental care have focused primarily on the costs and benefits of parental care and the life-history attributes that favour it. However, once care evolves, offspring in some taxa appear to become increasingly dependent on their parents. Although offspring dependency is a central theme in family life, the evolutionary dynamics leading to it are not fully understood. Beetles of the genus Nicrophorus are well known for their elaborate biparental care, including provisioning of their young. By manipulating the occurrence of pre- or post-hatching care, we show that the offspring of three burying beetle species, N. orbicollis, N. pustulatus, and N. vespilloides, show striking variation in their reliance on parental care. Our results demonstrate that this variation within one genus arises through a differential dependency of larvae on parental feeding, but not on pre-hatching care. In N. pustulatus, larvae appear to be nutritionally independent of their parents, but in N. orbicollis, larvae do not survive in the absence of parental feeding. We consider evolutionary scenarios by which nutritional dependency may have evolved, highlighting the role of brood size regulation via infanticide in this genus.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics, University of Ulm, 89081 Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Capodeanu-Nägler
authors.affiliation: Institute of Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics, University of Ulm, 89081 Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Eva M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Keppner
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology, Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Ecology, 07745 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Heiko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Vogel
authors.affiliation: Institute of Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics, University of Ulm, 89081 Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Manfred
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ayasse
authors.affiliation: Behavior, Ecology, Evolution and Systematics Section, School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal IL, USA.
authors.forename: Anne-Katrin
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Eggert
authors.affiliation: Behavior, Ecology, Evolution and Systematics Section, School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal IL, USA.
authors.forename: Scott K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Sakaluk
authors.affiliation: Institute of Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics, University of Ulm, 89081 Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Steiger
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D000073537:Biological Variation, Population; D001517:Coleoptera / Q000502:physiology*; D005247:Feeding Behavior