Back to Search
Start Over
Sperm competition games when males invest in paternal care
- Source :
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284:20171266
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- The Royal Society, 2017.
-
Abstract
- Sperm competition games investigate how males partition limited resources between pre- and post-copulatory competition. Although extensive research has explored how various aspects of mating systems affect this allocation, male allocation between mating, fertilization and parental effort has not previously been considered. Yet, paternal care can be energetically expensive and males are generally predicted to adjust their parental effort in response to expected paternity. Here, we incorporate parental effort into sperm competition games, particularly exploring how the relationship between paternal care and offspring survival affects sperm competition and the relationship between paternity and paternal care. Our results support existing expectations that (i) fertilization effort should increase with female promiscuity and (ii) paternal care should increase with expected paternity. However, our analyses also reveal that the cost of male care can drive the strength of these patterns. When paternal behaviour is energetically costly, increased allocation to parental effort constrains allocation to fertilization effort. As paternal care becomes less costly, the association between paternity and paternal care weakens and may even be absent. By explicitly considering variation in sperm competition and the cost of male care, our model provides an integrative framework for predicting the interaction between paternal care and patterns of paternity.
- Subjects :
- Male
0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine
Evolution
Biology
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Competition (economics)
Sexual Behavior, Animal
03 medical and health sciences
Animals
Mating
Parental investment
Sperm competition
General Environmental Science
General Immunology and Microbiology
Reproduction
General Medicine
Female promiscuity
Mating system
Spermatozoa
030104 developmental biology
Sexual selection
Female
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Paternal care
Social psychology
Demography
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14712954 and 09628452
- Volume :
- 284
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....c0f9c095ef33e82ac0713a2d9bfdd028