Parent-Offspring Conflict and Coadaptation

Hinde, Camilla A.; Johnstone, Rufus A.; Kilner, Rebecca M.

doi:10.1126/science.1186056

Cited by 138 publications

(176 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Under the mother -offspring co-adaptation hypothesis, an interaction between OFM and OGM is predicted to significantly influence the measured traits, with lower values of maternal care and fitness correlates in mismatched than matched combinations [4,24]. Conversely, under the parental antagonism hypothesis, OGM, OGF and/or an interaction between these two factors (indicative of intragenomic epistasis [9,12]) are expected to significantly influence the measured values of maternal care and fitness correlates of mothers and offspring.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conversely, maternally inherited genes expressed in offspring are predicted to limit the level of offspring demand because females suffer from the costs of exaggerated offspring demand and have siblings that are equally related from their maternal side [9]. While a growing number of experimental and theoretical studies show that parental antagonism and parent-offspring co-adaptation are keystones in the evolution of family life [4,8,9], little is known about their simultaneous effects within families and its consequence on family interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whereas parent-offspring co-adaptation is considered an important process in the evolution of family interactions [4,8,9], it remains unclear to what extent co-adaptation can operate when the two parents exhibit asymmetries in their investment or relatedness towards current offspring (e.g. due to multiple paternity), both of which commonly characterize animal mating systems [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…in terms of individual future reproduction [1][2][3][4]). Parent -offspring co-adaptation is an evolutionary mechanism known to contribute to the resolution of parent-offspring conflict over parental care by selecting for combinations of offspring demand and parental supply that match to maximize the fitness of family members [5,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parental antagonism and parent–offspring co-adaptation interact to shape family life

Meunier

Kölliker

2012

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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The family is an arena for conflicts between offspring, mothers and fathers that need resolving to promote the evolution of parental care and the maintenance of family life. Co-adaptation is known to contribute to the resolution of parent–offspring conflict over parental care by selecting for combinations of offspring demand and parental supply that match to maximize the fitness of family members. However, multiple paternity and differences in the level of care provided by mothers and fathers can generate antagonistic selection on offspring demand (mediated, for example, by genomic imprinting) and possibly hamper co-adaptation. While parent–offspring co-adaptation and parental antagonism are commonly considered two major processes in the evolution of family life, their co-occurrence and the evolutionary consequences of their joint action are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate the simultaneous and entangled effects of these two processes on outcomes of family interactions, using a series of breeding experiments in the European earwig, Forficula auricularia , an insect species with uniparental female care. As predicted from parental antagonism, we show that paternally inherited effects expressed in offspring influence both maternal care and maternal investment in future reproduction. However, and as expected from the entangled effects of parental antagonism and co-adaptation, these effects critically depended on postnatal interactions with caring females and maternally inherited effects expressed in offspring. Our results demonstrate that parent–offspring co-adaptation and parental antagonism are entangled key drivers in the evolution of family life that cannot be fully understood in isolation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parental antagonism and parent–offspring co-adaptation interact to shape family life

Meunier

Kölliker

2012

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…However, the similarity of these patterns is somewhat complicated by the unexpected finding that Babesia-treated offspring gained less weight than control offspring during the pre-weaning period. It is conceivable that increased suckling observed among the offspring of dams that had experienced infection was driven by the offspring rather than by the mothers, and hence may have reflected the need to increase suckling time owing to potentially limited or lower quality milk production [75][76][77]. An earlier experiment by Barnard et al [37] showed that suckling behaviour affected both social rank and immunity in mice, with aggressiveness inversely proportional to suckling, but, as in our study, it was not possible to determine whether this was offspring-or parentdriven.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infection before pregnancy affects immunity and response to social challenge in the next generation

Curno

Reader

McElligott

et al. 2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Natural selection should favour parents that are able to adjust their offspring's life-history strategy and resource allocation in response to changing environmental and social conditions. Pathogens impose particularly strong and variable selective pressure on host life histories, and parental genes will benefit if offspring are appropriately primed to meet the immunological challenges ahead. Here, we investigated transgenerational immune priming by examining reproductive resource allocation by female mice in response to direct infection with Babesia microti prior to pregnancy. Female mice previously infected with B. microti gained more weight over pregnancy, and spent more time nursing their offspring. These offspring generated an accelerated response to B. microti as adults, clearing the infection sooner and losing less weight as a result of infection. They also showed an altered hormonal response to novel social environments, decreasing instead of increasing testosterone production upon social housing. These results suggest that a dominance-resistance trade-off can be mediated by cues from the previous generation. We suggest that strategic maternal investment in response to an infection leads to increased disease resistance in the following generation. Offspring from previously infected mothers downregulate investment in acquisition of social dominance, which in natural systems would reduce access to mating opportunities. In doing so, however, they avoid the reduced disease resistance associated with increased testosterone and dominance. The benefits of accelerated clearance of infection and reduced weight loss during infection may outweigh costs associated with reduced social dominance in an environment where the risk of disease is high.

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Behavioural Ecology

Hager

Gini

2012

Encyclopedia of Life Sciences

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Based in part on the previous version of this eLS article 'Behavioural Ecology' (2005) by Reinmar Hager.Behavioural ecology investigates how animal behaviour is adapted to the physical and social environment of individuals. Over the past 40 years behavioural ecology has been established as a field of research in which both empirical and theoretical studies analyse how evolution has shaped animal behaviour through the process of natural selection. The underlying premise is that individuals adopt strategies (behaviours) that maximise their fitness, that is, the contribution of their genes to future populations. Behavioural ecology seeks to understand why a specific behaviour confers a fitness advantage to an individual given a set of ecological and social conditions. The adoption of methods from genetics, physiology, bioinformatics and developmental biology has greatly expanded the tool kit with which questions in behavioural ecology are addressed. What is Behavioural Ecology?Behavioural ecology is a branch of the biological sciences that deals with questions about the adaptive value of behaviour. Behavioural patterns are viewed as a result of natural selection, which have evolved in relation to the physical and social environment in which animals live. Thus, behaviour, like any other trait, evolves to maximise individual fitness. Research in behavioural ecology emerged over 40 years ago based on concepts from the fields of ethology (the study of behaviour), population genetics and ecology by rigorously applying the concept of natural selection in particular and evolutionary biology in general to the study of behaviour. See also: Fitness Tinbergen's four questions about behaviourTo understand the kind of questions about animal behaviour that behavioural ecologists focus on we need to consider the overall range of questions that could possibly be asked. In 1963 Nikolaas Tinbergen published his seminal paper on the aims and methods of ethology in which he defined four major questions in biology (Tinbergen, 1963). These are known as the four ways of asking why an animal behaves in a specific manner: (1) What underlying mechanism causes this behaviour? (proximate questions); (2) What is the survival value to the individual? (ultimate questions); (3) How did this behaviour evolve over time (evolution)? and (4) How does such behaviour develop during an individual's lifetime (ontogeny)? Proximate and ultimate questions represent different ways of addressing the issue of why an animal behaves in a certain way and are not mutually exclusive. Most studies in behavioural ecology, and in particular early works, have focused on answering ultimate questions. The migration of birds exemplifies this point. If we ask why birds migrate, the proximate answer might be that the change in daylight triggers migratory behaviour through activation of hormone production. An ultimate answer to that question would focus on the fitness benefits gained from increased food availability and avoidance of adverse weather conditions in northern cl...

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Parent-Offspring Conflict and Coadaptation

Cited by 138 publications

References 27 publications

Parental antagonism and parent–offspring co-adaptation interact to shape family life

Parental antagonism and parent–offspring co-adaptation interact to shape family life

Infection before pregnancy affects immunity and response to social challenge in the next generation

Behavioural Ecology

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