10.5061/DRYAD.5RG54
Kramer, Jos
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
Thesing, Julia
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
Meunier, Joël
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
Data from: Negative association between parental care and sibling
cooperation in earwigs: a new perspective on the early evolution of family
life?
Dryad
dataset
2015
precocial species
Forficula auricularia
maternal care
Social evolution
sibling rivalry
2015-04-07T15:30:51Z
2015-04-07T15:30:51Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12655
21068 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
The evolution of family life requires net fitness benefits for offspring,
which are commonly assumed to mainly derive from parental care. However,
an additional source of benefits for offspring is often overlooked:
cooperative interactions among juvenile siblings. In this study, we
examined how sibling cooperation and parental care could jointly
contribute to the early evolution of family life. Specifically, we tested
whether the level of food transferred among siblings (sibling cooperation)
in the European earwig Forficula auricularia (1) depends on the level of
maternal food provisioning (parental care), and (2) is translated into
offspring survival, as well as female investment into future reproduction.
We show that higher levels of sibling food transfer were associated with
lower levels of maternal food provisioning, possibly reflecting a
compensatory relationship between sibling cooperation and maternal care.
Furthermore, the level of sibling food transfer did not influence
offspring survival, but was associated with negative effects on the
production of the second and terminal clutch by the tending mothers. These
findings indicate that sibling cooperation could mitigate the detrimental
effects on offspring survival that result from being tended by low quality
mothers. More generally, they are in line with the hypothesis that sibling
cooperation is an ancestral behavior that can be retained to compensate
for insufficient levels of parental investment.
Measurements of food transfer among and life-history traits of female
European earwigs and their offspringThe data file contains measurements of
maternal food provisioning and the food transfer among nymphs, as well as
measurements of morphological and life-history traits. Note that
column-names are explained in the 'annotations'-sheet of the
file.150401_Dryad.xlsx