Brood size, food availability, and body size affects male care decisions and offspring performance

Abstract

Wong et al., 2013). Parental care can occur before or after the birth of offspring and includes various behaviors, such as the protection of offspring from predators, the maintenance of a favorable microenvironment and offspring provisioning (Balshine, 2012;Smiseth et al., 2012;Trumbo, 2012) amongst others. Across the animal kingdom, female care is much more widespread than male care (Clutton-Brock, 1991) and even in biparental families, males frequently invest less than females and desert the brood earlier or with a higher probability. The reason for this asymmetry is thought to lie in sex differences in the strength of sexual selection, in the association with the embryo, and in the certainty of parentage (Liker

Male boldness and female parental care predict reproductive success in a bi-parental cichlid, the rainbow krib (Pelvicachromis pulcher)

“…Individual differences in boldness assessed before breeding did not predict individual differences in parental care behaviour, indicating that individuals might adjust their behaviour in response to the breeding conditions. Most importantly, breeding conditions may vary among breeding pairs with respect to characteristics of the social environment, including brood size (Sahm et al, 2023), offspring quality (Thünken et al, 2010), partner quality (Robart & Sinervo, 2019), and partner behaviour (Westneat et al, 2011). Individuals having to adapt to these different conditions during the breeding might have caused the lack of cross-context correlation of behaviour.…”