Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/I025468/1
Social and co-evolutionary dynamics of mating behaviour and parental care
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Dr NJ Royle, University of Exeter, Biosciences
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor A Moore, University of Exeter, Biosciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Exeter, Biosciences
- Science Area:
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Science Topics:
- None
- Abstract:
- Mating and parental investment are key factors in determining the life history of an organism. A recent survey of empirical research suggests that despite a long history of interest and investigation, support for predicted relationships between mating behaviour and patterns of parental investment is poor. For example, males are predicted to decrease their parental effort in response to a decrease in their paternity if there are opportunities for higher paternity in the future, and females are expected to choose males based on male traits that indicate his fitness. However, neither of these predictions have firm empirical support. Consequently the explanatory power of the current conceptual framework relies upon post-hoc explanations rather than being able to generate a priori predictions. The likely reason for this is that the components of the relationship between mating and parental care that are important, such as conflict between the sexes over the amount of care to provide and parent-offspring behaviours, have been studied independently without considering their interactions (i.e. without considering social and co-evolutionary feedback loops). To be able to predict the evolution of patterns of mating behaviour and parental investment (and therefore mating systems and the life-histories of organisms) requires an understanding of how the behaviour of each family member is affected by the behaviour of the other members of the family. Here we propose to use artificial selection to test how female mating behaviour co-evolves with male care, trades-off with maternal care and influences parent-offspring relationships. In particular we will examine how these feedback loops affect or interact with the existing genetic correlations between the sexes. Such a co-evolutionary approach is essential to gain a more complete understanding of the dynamics underlying life-history evolution. We will pursue this research in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, where we have considerable preliminary and background research on patterns of inheritance, social interactions, and behaviour. Consequently our overall objective is to test experimentally how evolution of repeated mating behaviour of female Nicrophorus vespilloides beetles affects the (co)evolution of traits involved in parental care and mating behaviour. Our proposed work examines the importance of social interactions among individuals in determining the co-evolutionary relationship between mating and parental care behaviours, from which mating systems and associated life-history traits of organisms arise as emergent properties. Our work will therefore form an important stepping stone towards the development of a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of mating systems and life-history traits of organisms based on behavioural interactions among family members.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/I025468/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Standard Grant (FEC)
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Standard Grant
This grant award has a total value of £429,569
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DI - Equipment | DI - T&S | DA - Other Directly Allocated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £19,007 | £108,529 | £45,168 | £36,846 | £160,547 | £26,773 | £9,097 | £23,601 |
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