Parental Care and Investment
نویسندگان
چکیده
Parental care is common throughout the animal kingdom and among caring species there is a bewildering variation in how parents care for offspring, as well as in the amount of resources parents invest in care. For instance, there is considerable variation in the relative parental investment by the sexes – in some species females invest more, in others males invest more, and in some investment is more or less equally shared. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain patterns of parental investment between the sexes, as well as among species, and work is still ongoing to develop an overarching hypothesis that can explain the various patterns observed.
منابع مشابه
Sex differences in parental care: Gametic investment, sexual selection, and social environment.
Male and female parents often provide different type and amount of care to their offspring. Three major drivers have been proposed to explain parental sex roles: (1) differential gametic investment by males and females that precipitates into sex difference in care, (2) different intensity of sexual selection acting on males and females, and (3) biased social environment that facilitates the mor...
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The parental investment conflict considers the question of how much each sex should invest in each brood, thereby characterizing different animal species. Each species usually adopts a certain parental care pattern: female-care only, male-care only, biparental care, or even no parental care at all. The differences in care patterns are usually explained by the different costs and benefits arisin...
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Males play a variable parental role in reproduction, ranging from no male parental care to extensive male care. Females may acquire either direct or indirect fitness benefits from their mate choice, and direct fitness benefits include male parental care. Theoreticians have traditionally emphasized direct fitness benefits to females in species with extensive male parental care. We review the lit...
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