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Unpredictable environments lead to the evolution of parental neglect in birds

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posted on 2023-07-26, 14:56 authored by Shana M. Caro, Ashleigh S. Griffin, Camilla A. Hinde, Stuart A. West
A nest of begging chicks invites an intuitive explanation: needy chicks want to be fed and parents want to feed them. Surprisingly, however, in a quarter of species studied, parents ignore begging chicks. Furthermore, parents in some species even neglect smaller chicks that beg more, and preferentially feed the biggest chicks that beg less. This extreme variation across species, which contradicts predictions from theory, represents a major outstanding problem for the study of animal signalling. We analyse parent–offspring communication across 143 bird species, and show that this variation correlates with ecological differences. In predictable and good environments, chicks in worse condition beg more, and parents preferentially feed those chicks. In unpredictable and poor environments, parents pay less attention to begging, and instead rely on size cues or structural signals of quality. Overall, these results show how ecological variation can lead to different signalling systems being evolutionarily stable in different species.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

7

Page range

10985

Publication title

Nature Communications

ISSN

2041-1723

Publisher

Nature Research

File version

  • Published version

Language

  • eng

Legacy posted date

2020-03-23

Legacy creation date

2020-03-23

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Science & Technology (until September 2018)

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