Biparental care is a critical and, occasionally, unequally shared obligation that ensures that young survive to maturity. Such care may be complicated in systems in which one parent, typically the male, is unsure of his genetic relatedness to the young. Males may reduce paternal provisioning when full paternity is not assured, as occurs in mating systems in which females engage in extrapair copulations. Moreover, other factors independent of extrapair matings, such as male personality traits, likely also affect the level of paternal care. In this study, we determined the effect of a paternity threat event (i.e., a conspecific or a heterospecific territory intrusion) and male personality (i.e., the level of aggressiveness) on provisioning effort by male house wrens (Troglodytes aedon). Males were more likely to attack a conspecific intruder than a heterospecific intruder. Males that were exposed to a conspecific intruder were less likely to provision young at all. Of those males that did feed the young in their nest, male aggressiveness did not relate to feeding effort. These findings suggest that the likelihood of paternal care is reduced by perceived threats to paternity but that the costs of not feeding potentially multisired young are high and feeding efforts are unrelated to male personality.

中文翻译：

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感知到的对亲子关系的威胁降低了家鹪鹩进行父亲供养的可能性

双亲照料是一项至关重要的义务，有时甚至是不平等的共同义务，可以确保年轻人存活到成熟。在父母一方（通常是男性）不确定自己与孩子的遗传关系的系统中，这种照顾可能会很复杂。当不能保证完全的亲子关系时，雄性可能会减少父系供养，就像雌性进行配对交配的交配系统中发生的情况一样。此外，独立于配对外交配的其他因素，例如男性性格特征，也可能影响父亲的照顾水平。在这项研究中，我们确定了亲子关系威胁事件（即同种或异种领地入侵）和雄性性格（即攻击性水平）对雄性家鹪鹩（Troglodytes aedon）的觅食努力的影响。与异种入侵者相比，雄性更有可能攻击同种入侵者。暴露于同种入侵者的雄性根本不可能提供后代。在那些确实在巢中喂养幼崽的雄性中，雄性的攻击性与进食努力无关。这些发现表明，父亲照顾的可能性会因认为对亲子关系的威胁而降低，但不喂养潜在的多胎后代的成本很高，而且喂养努力与男性性格无关。