A female's past experience with predators affects male courtship and the care her offspring will receive from their father

Abstract

Differential allocation occurs when individuals adjust their reproductive investment based on their partner's traits. However, it remains unknown whether animals differentially allocate based on their partner's past experiences with predation risk. If animals can detect a potential mate's experience with predators, this might inform them about the stress level of their potential mate, the likelihood of parental effects in offspring and/or the dangers present in the environment. Using threespined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), we examined whether a female's previous experience with being chased by a model predator while yolking eggs affects male mating effort and offspring care. Males displayed fewer conspicuous courtship behaviours towards females that had experienced predation risk in the past compared with unexposed females. This differential allocation extended to how males cared for the resulting offspring of these matings: fathers provided less parental care to offspring of females that had experienced predation risk in the past. Our results show for the first time, to our knowledge, that variation among females in their predator encounters can contribute to behavioural variation among males in courtship and parental care, even when males themselves do not encounter a predator. These results, together with previous findings, suggest that maternal predator exposure can influence offspring development both directly and indirectly, through how it affects father care.

Predator‐induced maternal and paternal effects independently alter sexual selection

“…2B) when exposed to a predator themselves and when mated with a female who was predator exposed (Fig. 2C; consistent with McGhee et al 2015); these patterns are inconsistent with social buffering that would instead predict that fathers compensate for mothers' predator exposure by increasing parental care. Regardless of pattern, the changes in paternal care in response to mating with predator-exposed mothers that we observed may have indirectly contributed to the maternal effects on daughters' mating behavior.…”

“…) and parental care (McGhee et al. ) in response to predator exposure of their mates. Here, we find that fathers reduced their care (Fig.…”

“…It is possible that daughters of predator-exposed parents showed a "recovery" of preferences for brighter males (particularly prominent at the follows stage) due to social buffering (i.e., when social interactions such as parental care mitigate the costs of stressors; Beery and Kaufer 2015;Faustino et al 2017). Stickleback males can assess the experience their mates have had with predators, and adjust their courtship behavior (Dellinger et al 2018) and parental care (McGhee et al 2015) in response to predator exposure of their mates. Here, we find that fathers reduced their care (Fig.…”

Sex-specific transgenerational plasticity I: Maternal and paternal effects on sons and daughters

“…152 F1 offspring were generated using a split clutch design, resulting in: 1) offspring of 153 unexposed fathers and mothers (n=11 half-clutches), 2) offspring of exposed fathers and 154 unexposed mothers (n=11 half-clutches), 3) offspring of unexposed fathers and exposed mothers 155 (n=10 half-clutches), and 4) offspring of exposed fathers and mothers (n=10 half-clutches). By 156 artificially fertilizing the eggs and incubating the embryos using an air bubbler, we controlled for 157 possible pre-fertilization effects mediated by interactions between mothers and fathers 158 (Mashoodh et al 2012;McGhee et al 2015), as well as the post-fertilization effects mediated by 159 paternal care (Stein & Bell 2014). Separate groups of offspring were used for each assay 160 described below (see Supplementary Material for detailed methods and statistical analysis).…”

Effects of mothers’ and fathers’ experience with predation risk on the behavioral development of their offspring in threespined sticklebacks

“…For example, in sticklebacks, the previous predator experiences of a mother affects the amount of paternal care males provide to her offspring, with fathers providing less care, both pre- and post-hatching, to offspring of predator-exposed mothers [37]. Such examples of differential allocation are common [5,6].…”