Relating paternity to paternal care

Abstract

Intuition suggests, to most people, that parents should be selected to care for their offspring in relation to how certain they are of being the parents of those offspring. Theoretical models of the relationship between parental investment and certainty of parentage predict the two to be related only when some other assumptions are made, few of which can be taken for granted. I briefly review the models and their assumptions, and discuss two kinds of difficulty facing an empiricist wishing to test the models. The first is the problem of unmeasured (and immeasurable) variables. The second is the problem that even the most extensive models do not capture the complexity that can be demonstrated in real systems. I illustrate some of these problems, and some qualitative tests of the models, with experimental work on a population of the collared flycatcher. My conclusion is that although there are some cases where the models have qualitative support, we are a long way from understanding whether paternal care is commonly adjusted in relation to certainty of paternity.

When Dads Help: Male Behavioral Care During Primate Infant Development

“…Male care, paternal care, and paternal investment are frequently, but incorrectly, used interchangeably (Sheldon 2002 ) . First, we refer to "male care" instead of "paternal care" because genetic paternity is rarely known for most primate studies.…”

Correlates of genetic monogamy in socially monogamous mammals: insights from Azara's owl monkeys

“…In the past, theoretical considerations proposed that, in mammals, male care would be associated with high paternity certainty and low levels of EGP ( [34][35][36], but see [37]). A positive relationship between male care and high paternity certainty is usually postulated based on the assumption that the evolutionary benefits to males of providing care will be intimately related to the probability of biological relatedness between the male and the infant [35,[37][38][39].…”

Sexual Conflict Arising from Extrapair Matings in Birds

“…Multiple paternity in a brood potentially alters sexual conflict over parental investment because it reduces the fitness the social male could have gained from the current reproductive bout. However, it is debatable whether this translates into a reduction in paternal care (e.g., Sheldon 2002;Griffin et al 2013), although there are clearly conflicts of interest over the fitness consequences of EPP. For example, theory suggests that there can be situations under which EPP does not affect the optimal parental investment of the male (Westneat and Sherman 1993; Griffin et al 2013).…”

“…In addition to the risk of injury or transfer of sexually transmitted diseases during mating, the female suffers a potential indirect loss of fitness by having some of her offspring sired by a nonpreferred male-a cost that is the inverse of the benefits a female gains when EPP is female driven. Females may also suffer a cost due to the loss of parental care from her social mate when he suspects EPP (Sheldon 2002;Griffin et al 2013). Finally, there are also potential costs to the female mated to a male who seeks EPCshis extrapair matings could increase her risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or could result in lower investment from her mate if he invests time seeking extrapair mates (Magrath and Elgar 1997; Magrath and Komdeur 2003).…”

“…But EPP may cause females to increase their investment, either through the stimulatory effects of ejaculates from multiple males (Alonzo and Pizzari 2013) or when females engage in EPP to upgrade the genetic quality of their offspring, resulting in differential allocation of maternal care (Burley 1988). Thus, changes in female investment should be considered when evaluating the fitness costs to the pair male and the effects on his contribution to parental care (Sheldon 2000(Sheldon , 2002.…”