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opencc-by-4.0Apr 2020View details →

Data for vertebrate scavenger species composition on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts and implications for Nicrophorus americanus Olivier (American burying beetle) reintroduction

Abstract: We surveyed scavenger species on Nantucket Island, MA, using motion-activated wildlife cameras baited with carcasses of either a Mus musculus domesticus (House Mouse) or Colinus virginianus (Bobwhite Quail) in the summer of 2016. We aimed to identify vertebrate scavenger species, measure how long carcasses remained available, and examine differences in carrion consumption between grassland and shrubland vegetation types. This information is important for management decisions concerning a reintroduced population of a federally endangered obligate scavenger, Nicrophorus americanus (American Burying Beetle), on Nantucket Island. Carcasses were removed or consumed within 2.7 ± 1.8 d, and vertebrates removed the carcass in 74% of trials. Carcasses persisted for similar lengths of time between the 2 vegetation types, but avian scavengers were significantly more common on Bobwhite Quail carcasses in grassland, and mammalian scavengers were significantly more common on House Mouse carcasses in shrubland habitats. Avian species appear to be significant competitors for carrion appropriate for American Burying beetle reproduction. This project was partly funded by grant #15-233 from the <a href="https://www.norcrosswildlife.org/">Norcross Wildlife Foundation</a>.  File descriptions: allCameraData.csv- Cleaned raw camera data. 2015 data from a pilot study and 2016 data are what was used for the publication. dataDictionary.csv- Data dictionary for all csv files figure2_goodnessOfFitTests.R- R code to create figure 2 and run goodness of fit and post hoc tests quadplotper.csv- Data used by figure2_goodnessOfFitTests.R to create figure resultsSummarized.csv- Authors' determinations of what species removed carrion

opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Resource allocation is determined by both parents and offspring in a burying beetle

Parents and offspring have different optima for the level of parental resource allocation and the timing of nutritional independence. Theoretical models assume that either parents or offspring control the allocation of resources within a brood; however, control may also be mutual. Here we investigate whether the resolution of parent-offspring conflict is biased towards cues from either the parents' or the offspring's behaviour, or whether the conflict is under mutual control. Importantly, we considered potential shifts in the power continuum over the entire period of juvenile dependency. The burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides parents provision food for the larvae, and the larvae solicit food from their parents with conspicuous begging displays. Both parental and larval behaviours change as larvae age. We repeatedly manipulated the age of the brood females care for, thereby creating mismatch between the age of the foster brood and expected age of the brood from the female parent's perspective, over the period of dependency in juvenile development. We found that females adjusted the total amount of provisioning based on the actual age of the brood. However, both the parent and the offspring influenced the levels of food provisioning, which followed neither the expected age of the brood from the parent's perspective nor offspring age. Our results suggest that there is mutual control over parental care, thus contradicting the dichotomous view of control over parental care. We suggest that the mutual influence of both parents and the offspring should be taken into account in development of future theory, as well as empirical studies.

opencc-zeroSep 2020View details →

Early-life effects on body size in each sex interact to determine reproductive success in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides

Early-life conditions have been shown to have a profound effect on an animal's body size and fecundity across diverse taxa. However, less is known about how early-life effects on fecundity within each sex interact to determine reproductive success. We used experiments with burying beetles Nicrophorus vespilloides to analyse this problem. The nutritional conditions experienced by burying beetles in early life are a key determinant of adult body size in both sexes, and adult body size in turn influences male reproductive tactics. In previous work, we showed that smaller males are more effective than larger males at stimulating virgin female fecundity. In this study, we manipulated male and female body size by restricting access to food in early development. We then conducted breeding assays, in which small and large females were mated sequentially with small and large males, and then allowed to raise offspring without paternal care. We tested whether large females, which are potentially more fecund, laid even more eggs when mated with small males. We found no evidence to support this prediction. Instead we detected only a weak non-significant trend in the predicted direction and no equivalent trend in the number of larvae produced. However, we did find that larvae attained a greater mass by the end of development when their mother was large and mated with a small male first. We suggest that large females might have evolved counter-measures that prevent exploitation by small fecundity-stimulating males, including partial filial cannibalism. By eating surplus larvae during reproduction, larger females would leave more of the carrion for their offspring to consume. This could explain why their surviving larvae are able to attain a greater mass by the time they complete their development.

opencc-zeroSep 2020View details →

Habitat use of co-occurring burying beetles (genus Nicrophorus) in southeastern Ontario, Canada

The coexistence of closely related species plays an important role in shaping local diversity. However, competition for shared resources can limit the ability of species to coexist. Many species avoid the costs of coexistence by diverging in habitat use, known as habitat partitioning. We examine patterns of habitat use in seven co-occurring species of burying beetles (genus Nicrophorus Fabricius, 1775), testing the hypothesis that Nicrophorus species partition resources by occupying distinct habitats. We surveyed Nicrophorus abundance and 54 habitat characteristics at 100 random sites spanning an environmentally diverse region of southeastern Ontario, Canada. We found that three species occupied distinct habitat types consistent with habitat partitioning. Specifically, Nicrophorus pustulatus Herschel, 1807, Nicrophorus hebes Kirby, 1837, and Nicrophorus marginatus Fabricius, 1801 appear to be specialists for forest canopy, wetlands, and open fields, respectively. In contrast, Nicrophorus orbicollis Say, 1825, Nicrophorus sayi Laporte, 1840, and Nicrophorus tomentosus Weber, 1801 appear to be generalists with wide breadths of habitat use. We were unable to identify the habitat associations of Nicrophorus defodiens Mannerheim, 1846. Our findings are consistent with habitat acting as an important resource axis along which some Nicrophorus species partition; however, divergence along other resource axes (e.g., temporal partitioning) also appears important for Nicrophorus coexistence.

opencc-zeroMay 2021View details →

Data from: Adaptation to monogamy influences parental care but not mating behavior in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides

The mating system is expected to have an important influence on the evolution of mating and parenting behaviors. Although many studies have used experimental evolution to examine how mating behaviors evolve under different mating systems, this approach has seldom been used to study the evolution of parental care. We used experimental evolution to test whether adaptation to different mating systems involves changes in mating and parenting behaviors in populations of the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides. We maintained populations under monogamy or promiscuity for six generations. This manipulation had an immediate impact on reproductive performance and adult survival. Compared to monogamy, promiscuity reduced brood size and adult (particularly male) survival during breeding. After six generations of experimental evolution, there was no divergence between monogamous and promiscuous populations in mating behaviors. However, we found that parents from the promiscuous populations (especially males) displayed less care than parents from the monogamous populations. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that male care will increase with the certainty of paternity. However, it appears that this change is not associated with a concurrent change in mating behaviors.

opencc-zeroDec 2014View details →

Data from: The effect of size and sex-ratio experiences on reproductive competition in Nicrophorus vespilloides burying beetles in the wild

Male parents face a choice: should they invest more in caring for offspring or in attempting to mate with other females? The most profitable course depends on the intensity of competition for mates, which is likely to vary with the population sex ratio. However, the balance of pay-offs may vary among individual males depending on their competitive prowess or attractiveness. We tested the prediction that sex ratio and size of the resource holding male provide cues regarding the level of mating competition prior to breeding and therefore influence the duration of a male's biparental caring in association with a female. Male burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides were reared, post-eclosion, in groups that differed in sex ratio. Experimental males were subsequently translocated to the wild, provided with a breeding resource (carcass) and filmed. We found no evidence that sex ratio cues prior to breeding affected future parental care behaviour but males that experienced male-biased sex ratios took longer to attract wild mating partners. Smaller males attracted a higher proportion of females than did larger males, securing significantly more monogamous breeding associations as a result. Smaller males thus avoided competitive male–male encounters more often than larger males. This has potential benefits for their female partners who avoid both intrasexual competition and direct costs of higher mating frequency associated with competing males.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

Data from: Fitness costs of phoretic nematodes in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides

1. Nicrophorus vespilloides is a social beetle that rears its offspring on decomposing carrion. Wild beetles are frequently associated with two types of macrobial symbionts, mites and nematodes. 2. Although these organisms are believed to be phoretic commensals that harmlessly use beetles as a means of transfer between carcasses, the role of these symbionts on N. vespilloides fitness is poorly understood. Here we show that nematodes have significant negative effects on beetle fitness across a range of worm densities and also quantify the density-dependent transmission of worms between mating individuals and from parents to offspring. 3. Using field-caught beetles, we provide the first report of a new nematode symbiont in N. vespilloides, most closely related to Rhabditoides regina, and show that worm densities are highly variable across individuals isolated from nature but do not differ between males and females. Next, by inoculating mating females with increasing densities of nematodes, we show that worm infections significantly reduce brood size, larval survival and larval mass, and also eliminate the trade-off between brood size and larval mass. Finally, we show that nematodes are efficiently transmitted between mating individuals and from mothers to larvae, directly and indirectly via the carcass, and that worms persist through pupation. 4. These results show that the phoretic nematode R. regina can be highly parasitic to burying beetles but can nevertheless persist because of efficient mechanisms of intersexual and intergenerational transmission. 5. Phoretic species are exceptionally common and may cause significant harm to their hosts, even though they rely on these larger species for transmission to new resources. However, this harm may be inevitable and unavoidable if transmission of phoretic symbionts requires nematode proliferation. It will be important to determine the generality of our results for other phoretic associates of animals.

opencc-zeroDec 2013View details →

Data from: Asynchronous hatching in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus quadripunctatus, maxmises parental fitness

Life history theory predicts that natural selection favours parents who balance investment across offspring to maximize fitness. Theoretical studies have shown that the optimal level of parental investment from the offspring's perspective exceeds that of its parents, and the disparity between the two generates evolutionary conflict for the allocation of parental investment. In various species, the offspring hatch asynchronously. The age hierarchy of the offspring usually establishes competitive asymmetries within the brood and determines the allocation of parental investment among offspring. However, it is not clear whether the allocation of parental investment determined by hatching pattern is optimal for parent or offspring. Here, we manipulated the hatching pattern of the burying beetle Nicrophorus quadripunctatus to demonstrate the influence of hatching pattern on the allocation of parental investment. We found that the total weight of a brood was largest in the group that mimicked the natural hatching pattern, with the offspring skewed towards early hatchers. This increases parental fitness. However, hatching patterns with more later hatchers had heavier individual offspring weights, which increases offspring fitness, but this hatching pattern is not observed in the wild. Thus, our study suggests that the natural hatching pattern optimizes parental fitness, rather than offspring fitness.

opencc-zeroDec 2015View details →

Data from: Selection on an antagonistic behavioral trait can drive rapid genital coevolution in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides

Male and female genital morphology varies widely across many taxa, and even among populations. Disentangling potential sources of selection on genital morphology is problematic because each sex is predicted to respond to adaptations in the other due to reproductive conflicts of interest. To test how variation in this sexual conflict trait relates to variation in genital morphology we used our previously developed artificial selection lines for high and low repeated mating rates. We selected for high and low repeated mating rates using monogamous pairings to eliminate contemporaneous female choice and male-male competition. Male and female genital shape responded rapidly to selection on repeated mating rate. High and low mating rate lines diverged from control lines after only 10 generations of selection. We also detected significant patterns of male and female genital shape coevolution among selection regimes. We argue that because our selection lines differ in sexual conflict, these results support the hypothesis that sexually antagonistic coevolution can drive the rapid divergence of genital morphology. The greatest divergence in morphology corresponded with lines in which the resolution of intrasexual conflict over mating rate was biased in favor of male interests.

opencc-zeroDec 2011View details →

Data from: Post-hatching parental care masks the effects of egg size on offspring fitness: a removal experiment on burying beetles

Parents can increase the fitness of their offspring by allocating nutrients to eggs and/or providing care for eggs and offspring. Although we have a good understanding of the adaptive significance of both egg size and parental care, remarkably little is known about the co-evolution of these two mechanisms for increasing offspring fitness. Here, we report a parental removal experiment on the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides in which we test whether post-hatching parental care masks the effect of egg size on offspring fitness. As predicted, we found that the parent's presence or absence had a strong main effect on larval body mass, while there was no detectable effect of egg size. Furthermore, egg size had a strong and positive effect on offspring body mass in the parent's absence, while it had no effect on offspring body mass in the parent's presence. These results support the suggestion that the stronger effect of post-hatching parental care on offspring growth masks the weaker effect of egg size. We found no correlation between the number and size of eggs. However, there was a negative correlation between larval body mass and brood size in the parent's presence, but not in its absence. These findings suggest that the trade-off between number and size of offspring is shifted from the egg stage towards the end of the parental care period, and that post-hatching parental care somehow moderates this trade-off.

Fig. 8 in Efficient New Above-Ground Bucket Traps Produce Comparable Data to that of Standard Transects for the Endangered American Burying Beetle,Nicrophorus AmericanusOlivier (Coleoptera: Silphidae)

Fig. 8. Suggested improvements to above-ground bucket trap design using a wooden rain cover and landing pad to reduce disturbances from scavengers, reduce maintenance, and increase bait-life.

Fig. 5 in Efficient New Above-Ground Bucket Traps Produce Comparable Data to that of Standard Transects for the Endangered American Burying Beetle,Nicrophorus AmericanusOlivier (Coleoptera: Silphidae)

Fig. 5. Average differences in abundance estimates for Nicrophorus americanus between methods using various sample-effort conversion rates (n = 20). Normalized average differences are mean differences divided by their standard deviations to provide a standardized scale for comparisons because abundance estimates—and therefore differences between them—are inherently smaller when trap-nights are artificially increased.

Fig. 4 in Efficient New Above-Ground Bucket Traps Produce Comparable Data to that of Standard Transects for the Endangered American Burying Beetle,Nicrophorus AmericanusOlivier (Coleoptera: Silphidae)

Fig. 4. Sample site layout (n = 28) showing 800-m site buffers (open circles). The order in which trap methods were used during the two sample periods at each site included buckets then transects (circles), transects then buckets (squares), and transects during both sample periods at control sites (triangles).

Fig. 7 in Efficient New Above-Ground Bucket Traps Produce Comparable Data to that of Standard Transects for the Endangered American Burying Beetle,Nicrophorus AmericanusOlivier (Coleoptera: Silphidae)

Fig. 7. ANOVA group means showing the relationship between beetle captures and the numbers of disturbed traps. Beetle abundance values were ranked for the three sample nights at each site such that increasing rank represented increasing abundance. Precision was low in groups 4 and 5 due to small sample sizes (n = 6 and n = 4, respectively).

Fig. 1 in Efficient New Above-Ground Bucket Traps Produce Comparable Data to that of Standard Transects for the Endangered American Burying Beetle,Nicrophorus AmericanusOlivier (Coleoptera: Silphidae)

Fig. 1. Layout of a standard pitfall trap transect showing an 800-m trap sample range (USFWS estimate) and a 200-m trap sample range in comparison to 20-m trap spacing to illustrate the lack of independence among traps in a transect.

opennotspecifiedMar 2005View details →

Fig. 3 in Predatory Hypogaeic Beetles are Attracted to Buried Winter Moth (Lepidoptera: Geometridae) Pupae: Evidence Using a New Trap Design

Fig. 3. Small beetles (,1.5 mm in the smallest dimension) captured in baited (shaded) and control (open) hypogaeic traps at four sites in British Columbia between July and September 1991. Bars indicate standard errors.