Sexual conflict over parental care – temporal dynamics of the negotiation process

Parents who raise their offspring are nowadays no longer considered as harmoniously interacting family members, but rather as entities being involved in an arms race shaped by underlying evolutionary conflicts of interest. Although parents temporarily cooperate to enhance offspring survival, each parent can gain extra benefits by transferring the largest workload to the partner. Parents thus need to negotiate about their investment to reach optimal cooperation. However, it is currently unclear how such negotiation can contribute to evolutionary stable levels of care. In fact, contradicting assumptions and predictions pile up among theoretical studies, which is largely due to a lack of empirical knowledge about how the negotiation process develops throughout a reproductive event. The aim of this proposal is therefore to cover the expenses of a re-usable transponder-reader system, in order to fill and bridge this knowledge gap via carefully designed experimental manipulations in our blue tit study population near Antwerp. Such a transponder-reader system is easy to apply and particularly useful to gather extremely detailed information about male and female provisioning strategies. This purchase would create a tremendous complementary benefit to my planned research. Together, the transponder-reader system will significantly increase our knowledge about the mechanisms that lead to sexual conflict (and its resolution) and set the stage for the next generation of theoretical negotiation models explaining evolutionary stability of biparental care.

Keywords:EXPERIMENTAL STUDY, BEHAVIOURAL ECOLOGY, SEXUAL SELECTION, CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Disciplines:Animal biology, Ecology, Environmental science and management, Other environmental sciences, Veterinary medicine