Sexual conflict reduces offspring fitness in zebra finches
Nick J. Royle,
Ian R. Hartley () and
Geoff A. Parker
Additional contact information
Nick J. Royle: University of Lancaster
Ian R. Hartley: University of Lancaster
Geoff A. Parker: University of Liverpool
Nature, 2002, vol. 416, issue 6882, 733-736
Abstract:
Abstract Parental care is often costly1; hence, in sexually reproducing species where both male and female parents rear their offspring (biparental care), sexual conflict over parental investment can arise2. Such conflict occurs because each care-giver would benefit from withholding parental investment for use with another partner, leading to a reduction in the amount of care given by one parent at the expense of the other3,4,5. Here we report experiments to explore the prediction from theory that parents rearing offspring alone may provide greater parental investment than when rearing offspring together with a partner3,5. We found that when the number of offspring per parent, and hence the potential workload, were kept constant, offspring received a greater per capita parental investment from single females than from both parents working together, and that males reared by single mothers were more sexually attractive as adults than their biparentally reared siblings. This difference between single- and two-parent families is due to a reduction in care provided by females when they care together with a male, rather than laziness by males or differences in the begging behaviour of chicks, supporting the claim that sexual conflict in biparental care can reduce the quality of offspring raised3,5.
Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/416733a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:416:y:2002:i:6882:d:10.1038_416733a
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/
DOI: 10.1038/416733a
Access Statistics for this article
Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper
More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().