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Optimal maternal investment in the dung beetle Onthophagus taurus?

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Abstract

Optimal investment theory is based on the assumption that the proximate constraint acting on parental investment is resource based. A trade-off between per offspring investment and total investment seems intuitive. Consequently, a parent’s investment strategy is expected to represent a trade-off between the benefits of investment for current offspring and the costs to future reproduction for parents. In this study, we provide clear evidence that the costs and benefits of maternal provisioning in the dung beetle Onthophagus taurus influence the amount of provisions provided by the mother. Horse dung is typically of a higher nutritional value than cow dung and females were shown to provide 20% less dung to offspring when provisioning with horse dung. By reducing their investment per offspring and exhibiting a clear preference to provision offspring with horse dung, females were able to produce significantly more offspring. Females provisioning with horse dung received greater fitness returns per unit of investment and experienced lower provisioning costs, in terms of the minimum amount of dung required to produce a surviving offspring, than females provisioning with cow dung. Females provisioning in soil of low moisture content were found to have higher tunneling costs than those provisioning in soil of high moisture content, while the fitness returns per unit of investment did not differ. We adopted a marginal value theorem (MVT) approach to calculate the theoretical optimal level of investment for each dung type and for each soil moisture. Predicted levels of provisioning were lower for horse dung than for cow dung and for moist soil than for dry soil. Therefore, the results of this study are in qualitative agreement with MVT predictions and provide empirical support for the proposal that females can adaptively adjust their level of investment in response to resource and/or habitat quality. However, the theoretically predicted optimal investment yielded a poor quantitative fit with our observed levels of investment, with females providing over twice the investment predicted by the MVT approach. We suggest that this difference may reflect either our inability in directly quantifying all the necessary costs and benefits of investment in O. taurus and/or the applicability of the underlying assumptions of MVT.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Ian Dadour and the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia for the use of equipment during this experiment. Susan Page and the Byrne family allowed us access to their land for the collection of dung and beetles, respectively. We thank Geoff Parker, Hanna Kokko, Luc Bussiére, Rob Brooks and Michael Jennions for valuable discussions and comments that greatly improved this manuscript. J.H. was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Research Award and L.W.S. by the Australian Research Council.

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  1. John Hunt

    Present address: School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of New South Wales, 2052, Sydney, NSW, Australia

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  1. Evolutionary Biology Research Group, Zoology Building, The University of Western Australia, School of Animal Biology (M092), 6009, Nedlands , WA, Australia

    John Hunt & Leigh W. Simmons

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Correspondence to John Hunt.

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Communicated by D. Gwynne

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Hunt, J., Simmons, L.W. Optimal maternal investment in the dung beetle Onthophagus taurus?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 55, 302–312 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-003-0705-1

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