Abstract

The parental roles of males and females differ considerably between and within species. By means of individual-based evolutionary simulations, we strive to explain this diversity. We show that the conflict between the sexes creates a sex bias (towards maternal or paternal care), even if the two sexes are initially identical. When including sexual selection, there are two outcomes: either female mate choice and maternal care or no mate choice and paternal care. Interestingly, the care pattern drives sexual selection and not vice versa. Longer-term simulations exhibit rapid switches between alternative parental care patterns, even in constant environments. Hence, the evolutionary lability of sex roles observed in phylogenetic studies is not necessarily caused by external changes. Overall, our findings are in striking contrast to the predictions of mathematical models. We show that the discrepancies are caused by transient within-sex polymorphisms in parental strategies, a factor largely neglected in current sex-role theory.

Animals differ remarkably in how parental care is distributed between the male and female parent. Here, the authors use evolutionary simulations to reveal that sex differences in care readily emerge in a characteristic manner that is not captured by current sex role theory.

Details

Title
Transient polymorphisms in parental care strategies drive divergence of sex roles
Author
Long, Xiaoyan 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Weissing, Franz J. 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 University of Groningen, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, Groningen, The Netherlands (GRID:grid.4830.f) (ISNI:0000 0004 0407 1981); University of Freiburg, Institute of Biology I, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany (GRID:grid.5963.9) (ISNI:0000 0004 0491 7203) 
 University of Groningen, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, Groningen, The Netherlands (GRID:grid.4830.f) (ISNI:0000 0004 0407 1981) 
Pages
6805
Publication year
2023
Publication date
2023
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2882124429
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2023. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.