Offspring overcome poor parenting by being better parents
Data files
May 23, 2024 version files 68.52 KB
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F1_Parental_Family_Data.csv
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F1_Parental_Family_Data.xlsx
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F2_Life_History_and_Parental_Care_Conditions.csv
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F2_Life_History_and_Parental_Care_Conditions.xlsx
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README.md
Abstract
The evolutionary repercussions of parental effects—the impact of the developmental environment provided by parents on offspring—are often discussed as static effects that can have negative influences on offspring fitness that may even persist across generations. However, individuals are not passive recipients and may mitigate the persistence of parental effects through their behaviour. Here, we tested how the burying beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis, a species with complex parental care, responded to poor parenting. We cross-fostered young manipulated the duration of parental care received and measured the impact on traits of both F1 and F2 offspring to experimentally extricate the effect of poor parenting from other parental effects. As expected, reducing parental care negatively affected traits that are ecologically important for burying beetles, including F1 offspring development time and body size. However, F1 parents who received reduced care as larvae spent more time feeding F2 offspring than parents who received full care as larvae. As a result, both the number and mass of F2 offspring were unaffected by the developmental experience of their parents. Our results show that flexible parental care may be able to overcome poor developmental environments and limit negative parental effects to a single generation.
README: Offspring overcome poor parenting by being better parents in Nicrophorus orbicollis
In this study, we manipulated the duration of parental care that young of the burying beetle Nicrophorus orbicollis received, such that beetles received full (7-9 days) or reduced (six hours) parental care. These data include the impact of full or reduced care on offspring development and life history ("F1 Parental Family Data"), and also how manipulating the parental care that beetles received impacted their behavior when they reached adulthood and the impact on the development of F2 offspring ("F2 Life History and Parental Care Conditions").
Description of the Data and file structure
F1 Parental Family Data
This dataset includes the effects of manipulating the duration of parental care received (full or reduced) on the development and life history of Nicrophorus orbicollis. Data are provided as both an Excel and a CSV file to increase accessibility.
Explanation of empty cells in different fields:
- "mouse mass": mouse mass is only included once per family, so cells will be empty for all additional family members.
- "larva sex": field empty if larva did not survive to eclosion when the sex of individuals can be determined.
- "time dispersal from mouse to pupal stage", "time pupae to eclosion", "total development time": empty if the individual did not survive for the entire duration of those periods.
- "individual pronotum length as an adult": field empty if the beetle did not survive until the adult stage when beetles could be measured.
F2 Life History and Parental Care Conditions
This dataset includes the effects of manipulating the duration of parental care received (full or reduced) on offspring when they have reached adulthood. The first tab, "F2 Parental Care Conditions", includes data on how long parents provided care and the number and mass of F2 offspring. The second tab, "Parental Behav of F1 to F2", included data on the proportion of observation time that parents who received full or reduced care themselves spent engaging in different kinds of parental care behaviors. Data are provided as both an Excel and a CSV file to increase accessibility.
Explanation of empty cells in different fields:
- "sex of deserter": field empty if neither of the parents deserted the carcass
- "did focal parent show parental care behavior during observation": field empty if the focal parent had deserted before observation.
- "days from egg to when focal parent abandoned": empty if the parent did not abandon
- "length larval development on carcass", "number of larva dispersed", "average larval mass", "direct care", "indirect care", "total time spent on carcass"; these fields are empty if larvae did not survive, eggs did not hatch, or if the focal parent deserted, as indicated by previous fields.
Methods
We conducted manipulations of the developmental environment by providing some beetles with reduced post-hatching parental care (6 hours) or full post-hatching parental care (7-9 days). We determined how reducing parental care influenced the duration of developmental stages, survival, larval mass, and adult body size. We then determined how the developmental experience of these larvae in adulthood - those that received full or reduced care - influenced the same traits of their offspring when these individuals became parents. We further determined how developmental experience impacted parental care behavior when young became parents themselves.