How conditional cooperation can be achieved to resolve the conflict between caring parents.

Biparental care requires that two unrelated individuals raise their offspring together, which increases offspring survival and therefore parental fitness. However, each parent has to invest in care which comes with an individual cost and thus both parents aim to invest as little as possible. Recently, a parental strategy has been proposed that could provide a resolution for this conflict between the parents, that is taking turns in offspring provisioning, a form of cooperation that implies that parents alternate their feeding visits. However, some important aspects are still unknown, while vital for our understanding of the adaptive significance of this strategy. In particular, I aim to study (a) whether and how turn taking is an honest, evolutionary stable strategy; (b) how such a resolution of conflict between parents affects the parent-offspring conflict, as turn taking is thought to increase nest visit rates and thus offspring growth; (c) how turn taking can last, if parents may have to invest more heavily in another parental task besides provisioning; (d) how important compatibility between pair members is, and how such compatibility can be achieved; (e) and finally how the environmental conditions shape such parental strategy. To answer these questions, I will study a wild population of blue tits, a species with biparental care. I will use sophisticated tracking devices and cameras that allow detailed behavioural measurements, combined with well-designed experiments.

Keywords:PARENTAL CARE

Disciplines:Animal biology