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Sex roles, parental care and offspring growth in two contrasting coucal species

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dc.creator Goymann, Wolfgang
dc.creator Safari, Ignas
dc.creator Muck, Christina
dc.creator Schwabl, Ingrid
dc.date 2021-05-06T11:40:49Z
dc.date 2021-05-06T11:40:49Z
dc.date 2016
dc.date.accessioned 2022-10-20T13:09:27Z
dc.date.available 2022-10-20T13:09:27Z
dc.identifier Goymann, W., Safari, I., Muck, C., & Schwabl, I. (2016). Sex roles, parental care and offspring growth in two contrasting coucal species. Royal Society open science, 3(10), 160463.
dc.identifier 2054-5703
dc.identifier DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160463
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12661/2975
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12661/2975
dc.description Abstract. Full text article available at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160463
dc.description The decision to provide parental care is often associated with trade-offs, because resources allocated to parental care typically cannot be invested in self-maintenance or mating. In most animals, females provide more parental care than males, but the reason for this pattern is still debated in evolutionary ecology. To better understand sex differences in parental care and its consequences, we need to study closely related species where the sexes differ in offspring care. We investigated parental care in relation to offspring growth in two closely related coucal species that fundamentally differ in sex roles and parental care, but live in the same food-rich habitat with a benign climate and have a similar breeding phenology. Incubation patterns differed and uniparental male black coucals fed their offspring two times more often than female and male white-browed coucals combined. Also, white-browed coucals had more ‘off-times’ than male black coucals, during which they perched and preened. However, these differences in parental care were not reflected in offspring growth, probably because white-browed coucals fed their nestlings a larger proportion of frogs than insects. A food-rich habitat with a benign climate may be a necessary, but—perhaps unsurprisingly—is not a sufficient factor for the evolution of uniparental care. In combination with previous results (Goymann et al. 2015 J. Evol. Biol. 28, 1335–1353 (doi:10.1111/jeb.12657)), these data suggest that white-browed coucals may cooperate in parental care, because they lack opportunities to become polygamous rather than because both parents were needed to successfully raise all offspring. Our case study supports recent theory suggesting that permissive environmental conditions in combination with a particular life history may induce sexual selection in females. A positive feedback loop among sexual selection, body size and adult sex-ratio may then stabilize reversed sex roles in competition and parental care.
dc.language en
dc.publisher The Royal Society
dc.subject Parental care
dc.subject Sex roles
dc.subject Self-maintenance
dc.subject Climate
dc.subject Breeding phenology
dc.subject Offspring growth
dc.subject Sexual selection
dc.subject Offspring care
dc.subject Animal parental care
dc.title Sex roles, parental care and offspring growth in two contrasting coucal species
dc.type Article


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