Abstract

Offspring of many animals beg for food from parents. Begging is often costly, and offspring should seek to reduce such costs to maximize their returns on begging. Whenever multiple adults provide care for a joint brood, as in species where multiple females breed communally, offspring should beg toward the parent that provisions the most food. Here, we investigate whether larvae spend more time begging toward larger females in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. Prior work on this species shows that larger females provision more food than smaller ones, suggesting that larvae would benefit by preferentially begging toward larger females. To test for such a preference, we provided experimental broods with a simultaneous choice between two dead females: a smaller and a larger one. Larvae spent more time begging toward larger females. We next examined the behavioral mechanism for why larvae begged more toward larger females. Larvae spent more time in close contact with larger females over smaller ones, whereas there was no evidence that larvae begged more when in close contact with larger females. Thus, larvae begged more toward the larger female simply as a consequence of spending more time close to larger females. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of parent–offspring communication by showing that offspring can choose between parents based on parental attributes, such as body size, reflecting how much food parents are likely to provision.

中文翻译：

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后代更多地向埋葬甲虫的雌性乞讨

摘要

许多动物的后代向父母乞讨食物。乞讨通常是昂贵的，后代应该设法降低这种成本，以最大程度地提高乞讨的回报。每当有多个成年的人提供联合育雏的照顾时，例如在有多个雌性共同繁殖的物种中，后代应向提供最多食物的父母乞求。在这里，我们调查幼虫是否将更多的时间花在埋藏的甲虫Nicrophorus vespilloides中向较大的雌性乞讨。先前对该物种的研究表明，较大的雌性比较小的雌性提供更多的食物，这表明幼虫通过优先向较大的雌性乞讨而受益。为了测试这种偏好，我们为实验性育雏提供了两个死雌之间的同时选择：一个较小和一个更大。幼虫花更多的时间向更大的雌性乞讨。接下来，我们研究了为什么幼虫向更大的雌性乞讨的行为机制。幼虫要花更多的时间与较大的雌性紧密接触，而不是与较小的雌性紧密接触，但是没有证据表明幼虫乞讨更多。与较大的雌性密切接触。因此，幼虫向较大的雌性乞讨更多，这仅仅是因为花费更多的时间接近较大的雌性。我们的发现通过表明后代可以根据父母的属性（例如体型）在父母之间进行选择，从而反映出父母可能提供的食物量，这些发现对我们对父母与后代的沟通的理解具有重要意义。