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Environmental cues influence parental brood structure decisions in the burying beetle Nicrophorus marginatus

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Abstract

Parents evaluate multiple extrinsic and intrinsic cues when making decisions associated with reproduction. These decisions often reflect classic trade-offs between the cost of a strategy and its perceived fitness payoff. Life history theory predicts that when parents experience austere conditions, reproductive success is increased by producing fewer but larger offspring with a competitive advantage in this environment. Conversely, parents experiencing favorable conditions are expected to increase current reproductive success by favoring quantity over quality of offspring. We tested the predictions of life history theory using Nicrophorus marginatus (Coleoptera: Silphidae), a burying beetle species that exhibits infanticide during biparental care and hypervariable adult size across populations, by employing a factorial design that manipulated density and nutritional quality of food. We measured (1) the average number of offspring produced, (2) the average individual size of offspring, and (3) the sex ratio of the offspring. We found no effect of density or food quality on offspring sex ratio, but mean offspring size and number differed between low and high-density treatments. Nutritional environment interacted with density effects such that parents with access to high quality diets were able to modulate offspring size and number to match the perceived competitive environment, whereas those in poor nutritional condition appeared to exhibit physiological constraints to producing optimal brood structures.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Robert Hamilton and Tony Brown of The Nature Conservancy’s Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma for access to the field collecting site, the Oklahoma Chapter of The Nature Conservancy for partial financial support of the project, Augustana College students Anna Bahnson, Claire Bestul, Morgan DePerno, Paige DePerno, Bailey Ketelsen, Courtney Moore and Ashley Schmidt for assistance with laboratory experiments and animal care, and Jann Hayman and Craig Walker of the Osage Nation Environmental and Natural Resources Office for assistance in field collections.

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  1. Department of Biological Sciences, University of New Hampshire, 38 Academic Way, Durham, NH, 03824, USA

    Brooke K. Woelber, Carrie L. Hall & Daniel R. Howard

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  1. Brooke K. Woelber
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Correspondence to Daniel R. Howard.

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Woelber, B.K., Hall, C.L. & Howard, D.R. Environmental cues influence parental brood structure decisions in the burying beetle Nicrophorus marginatus . J Ethol 36, 55–64 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-017-0527-7

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