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39 results for “Nicrophorus vespilloides”
Experimental evolution of a more restrained clutch size when filial cannibalism is prevented in burying beetles Nicrophorus vespilloides
<p>The over-production of offspring is commonly associated with high hatching failure and a mechanism for dispensing with surplus young. We used experimental evolution of burying beetle populations Nicrophorus vespilloides to determine causality in these correlations. We asked: does eliminating the mechanism for killing 'spare' offspring cause the evolution of a more restrained clutch size, and consequently select for reduced hatching failure? N. vespilloides typically over-produces eggs but kills 1st instar larvae through partial filial cannibalism during brood care. We established replicate evolving populations that either could practice filial cannibalism (Full Care) or could not, by removing parents before their young hatched (No Care). After 20+ generations of experimental evolution, we measured clutch size and hatching success. We found that No Care females produced fewer eggs than Full Care females when allowed to breed on a small corpse, a finding not explained by differences in female quality. On larger corpses, females from both populations laid similar numbers of eggs. Furthermore, hatching success was greater in the No Care populations on small corpses. Our results suggest that the adaptive over-production of offspring depends on a mechanism for eliminating surplus young and that killing offspring, in turn, relaxes selection against hatching failure.</p>
Nest construction and its effect on post-hatching family life in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides
<p>Through the effort required to construct them, the microenvironmental conditions they impose on the family and their indirect influence on post-hatching care, nests play a key role in influencing family life. We combined experimental evolution with cross-fostering experiments on laboratory populations of <em>Nicrophorus vespilloides </em>to investigate three ways in which the nest can contribute more broadly to parental investment. We used replicate populations of <em>N. vespilloides </em>that had evolved for 42 generations under contrasting regimes of care. Populations were either able to supply post-hatching care ("Full Care") or prevented from supplying any post-hatching care ("No Care"). Research on these populations has previously shown that the No Care populations evolved to build rounder nests, more rapidly, by Generation 14. Here we found: 1) larvae raised by Full Care parents on nests prepared by parents from the No Care population did not attain a higher mass by the end of larval development than larvae in other treatments. However, we did discover that: 2) cross-fostering nests between families consistently reduced larval mass – and to a similar extent whether nests were cross-fostered between or within the populations. We suggest that cross-fostering disrupted the chemical environment on and around the nest since we found no evidence that 3) nests mediate interactions between males and females. The duration of paternal care was consistently shorter than the duration of maternal care, and even shorter for males from the No Care populations than males from the Full Care populations. Nevertheless, the duration of male care did not predict variation in duration of female care. In short, although the nest is the substrate for burying beetle family life, we found little evidence that it had evolved divergently in our experimental populations to influence parental investment.</p>
Data from: Duplication and sub/neofunctionalization of Malvolio, an insect homolog of Nramp, in the subsocial beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides
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Experimental evolution of a more restrained clutch size when filial cannibalism is prevented in burying beetles Nicrophorus vespilloides
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Nest construction and its effect on post-hatching family life in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides
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Early-life effects on body size in each sex interact to determine reproductive success in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides
<p>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 <em>Nicrophorus vespilloides</em> 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.</p>
Data from: Adaptation to monogamy influences parental care but not mating behavior in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides
<p>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, <i>Nicrophorus vespilloides</i>. 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.</p>
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.
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.
Data from: Do female Nicrophorus vespilloides reduce direct costs by choosing males that mate less frequently?
Sexual conflict occurs when selection to maximize fitness in one sex does so at the expense of the other sex. In the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, repeated mating provides assurance of paternity at a direct cost to female reproductive productivity. To reduce this cost, females could choose males with low repeated mating rates or smaller, servile males. We tested this by offering females a dichotomous choice between males from lines selected for high or low mating rate. Each female was then allocated her preferred or non-preferred male to breed. Females showed no preference for males based on whether they came from lines selected for high or low mating rates. Pairs containing males from high mating rate lines copulated more often than those with low line males but there was a negative relationship between female size and number of times she mated with a non-preferred male. When females bred with their preferred male the number of offspring reared increased with female size but there was no such increase when breeding with non-preferred males. Females thus benefited from being choosy, but this was not directly attributable to avoidance of costly male repeated mating.
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.
Early-life effects on body size in each sex interact to determine reproductive success in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides
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Data from: Selection on an antagonistic behavioral trait can drive rapid genital coevolution in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides
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Data from: Resource availability, but not polyandry, influences sibling conflict in a burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides
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Data from: Fitness costs of phoretic nematodes in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides
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Data from: No evidence of sibling cooperation in the absence of parental care in Nicrophorus vespilloides
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Data from: Intergenerational effects of inbreeding in Nicrophorus vespilloides: offspring suffer fitness costs when either they or their parents are inbred
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Data from: The effect of size and sex-ratio experiences on reproductive competition in Nicrophorus vespilloides burying beetles in the wild
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Data from: Do female Nicrophorus vespilloides reduce direct costs by choosing males that mate less frequently?
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Data from: Sibling competition does not exacerbate inbreeding depression in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides
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