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On the coadaptation of offspring begging and parental supply—a within-individual approach across life stages

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Abstract

Parental care is often characterized by complex behavioral interactions between offspring soliciting for food and parents providing food. During this interplay both behaviors, offspring begging and parental provisioning, can exert a selective pressure on the expression of the other. It has, therefore, been predicted that traits involved in this interplay may coevolve and ultimately become (genetically) correlated. Such covariation has—at least at the phenotypic level—been found in a number of cross-fostering studies, including evidence from the canary (Serinus canaria), our model species. However, a common challenge for these studies has been to establish a genetic covariation given the difficulty to disentangle the relative contribution of genetic and maternal effects, as the latter may act already before cross-fostering. We addressed this problem by studying within-individual covariation between begging (expressed at the nestling stage) and provisioning (expressed at the adult stage). In addition, we estimated the degree of heritability of these behaviors using parent-offspring regressions, as inheritance forms a prerequisite for any genetic correlation. Both traits showed a low to moderate non-significant heritability, similar to those previously reported in other bird species. However, offspring begging and parental provisioning did not covary at the intra-individual level. Thus, individuals begging intensively as nestlings were not necessarily individuals that provided more food as adults or vice versa. These findings provide important insights for our understanding of coadaptation, suggesting that factors other than genes such as maternal effects may play a role in adjusting offspring begging to the levels of parental provisioning.

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Acknowledgments

We specially thank Peter Scheys and Geert Eens for taking care of the birds, Jonas Vergauwen for the help during the experiments, Stefan van Dongen for statistical advice and Roi Dor and Mathias Kölliker for providing the non-standardized values of heritabilities. Roi Dor provided valuable comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) (1503307 and 1503307 N to WM), a predoctoral grant from the FWO (1151211 N to NE) and the University of Antwerp (BOF NOI UA and other funding to WM and ME).

Ethical standards

Birds were kept as detailed in the Methods section above. No deterioration of condition or abnormalities in appearance or behavior as consequence of the handling (behavioral trials, video recordings, bird measurements, and handling) were observed. All experiments complied with the current Flemish and Belgian institutional laws and were performed under licenses 2008-26 and 2011-07 of the University of Antwerp Ethical Committee for animal experiments.

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  1. Department of Biology-Ethology, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1, Antwerp (Wilrijk), Belgium

    Natalia Estramil, Marcel Eens & Wendt Müller

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  1. Natalia Estramil
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  2. Marcel Eens
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  3. Wendt Müller
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Correspondence to Natalia Estramil.

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Communicated by M. Leonard

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Estramil, N., Eens, M. & Müller, W. On the coadaptation of offspring begging and parental supply—a within-individual approach across life stages. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 68, 1481–1491 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1756-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1756-1

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