A sustained change in the supply of parental care causes adaptive evolution of offspring morphology

Benjamin J. M. Jarrett (), Emma Evans, Hannah B. Haynes, Miranda R. Leaf, Darren Rebar, Ana Duarte, Matthew Schrader and Rebecca M. Kilner
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Benjamin J. M. Jarrett: University of Cambridge
Emma Evans: University of Cambridge
Hannah B. Haynes: University of Cambridge
Miranda R. Leaf: University of Cambridge
Darren Rebar: University of Cambridge
Ana Duarte: University of Cambridge
Matthew Schrader: University of Cambridge
Rebecca M. Kilner: University of Cambridge

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Although cooperative social interactions within species are considered an important driver of evolutionary change, few studies have experimentally demonstrated that they cause adaptive evolution. Here we address this problem by studying the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. In this species, parents and larvae work together to obtain nourishment for larvae from the carrion breeding resource: parents feed larvae and larvae also self-feed. We established experimentally evolving populations in which we varied the assistance that parents provided for their offspring and investigated how offspring evolved in response. We show that in populations where parents predictably supplied more care, larval mandibles evolved to be smaller in relation to larval mass, and larvae were correspondingly less self-sufficient. Previous work has shown that antagonistic social interactions can generate escalating evolutionary arms races. Our study shows that cooperative interactions can yield the opposite evolutionary outcome: when one party invests more, the other evolves to invest less.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06513-6

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