ArticleEvolution; international journal of organic evolution2021
Constrained flexibility of parental cooperation limits adaptive responses to harsh conditions.
Article in Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The impact of urbanisation on social behaviour: a comprehensive review.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Pooled it
- Temperature Variation Regulates the Trade-Off Between Pre- and Post-Hatching Investment in a Burying Beetle.Insects · 2025Article
- Heat stress effects on offspring compound across parental care.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Revisiting the ecology and evolution of burying beetle behavior (Staphylinidae: Silphinae).Ecology and evolution · 2024Review
- The mating system of Himalayan marmots as inferred by microsatellite markers.Current zoology · 2023Article
- Long-term environmental stability does not erode plasticity in nest building responses to changing ambient conditions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Brood size, food availability, and body size affects male care decisions and offspring performance.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Gene expression underlying parenting and being parented shows limited plasticity in response to different ambient temperatures.Molecular ecology · 2022Article
- Constrained flexibility of parental cooperation limits adaptive responses to harsh conditions.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2021Article
- Can recent evolutionary history promote resilience to environmental change?Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- Experimental evidence for flexibility in provisioning behavior in a cooperatively breeding bird.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Parental care is predicted to evolve to mitigate harsh environments, thus adaptive plasticity of care may be an important response to our climate crisis. In biparental species, fitness costs may be reduced by resolving conflict and enhancing cooperation among partners. We investigated this prediction with the burying beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis, by exposing them to contrasting benign and harsh thermal environments. Despite measurable fitness costs under the harsh environment, sexual conflict persisted in the form of sex-specific social plasticity. That is, females provided equivalent care with or without males, whereas males with partners deserted earlier and reduced provisioning effort. The interaction of social condition and thermal environment did not explain variation in individual behavior, failing to support a temperature-mediated shift from conflict to cooperation. Examining selection gradients and splines on cumulative care revealed a likely explanation for these patterns. Contrary to predictions, increased care did not enhance offspring performance under stress. Rather, different components of care were under different selection regimes, with optimization constrained due to lack of coordination between parents. We suggest that the potential for parenting to ameliorate the effects of our climate crisis may depend on the sex-specific evolutionary drivers of parental care, and that this may be best reflected in components of care.
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