The Evolution of Parental Care

By T. H. Clutton-Brock. 2019

1,986 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Synthesizing studies of parental care in a wide variety of animals, this book is the first attempt to provide general answers to the following important questions: Why does the extent of parental care vary so widely between species? Why do only females care for eggs and young in some animals, only males in others, and both parents in a few? To what extent is parental care adjusted to variation in its benefits to offspring and its costs to parents? How do parents divide their resources between their sons and daughters? In this book separate chapters examine the evolution of variation in egg and neonate size, of viviparity and other forms of bearing, and of differences in the duration of incubation, gestation, and lactation. The book reviews theoretical and empirical predictions concerning the evolution of parental care and examines the extent to which these are supported by empirical evidence. The author examines the distribution of parental care among offspring, reviews the empirical evidence that parents invest to different extents in their sons and daughters, and discusses the degree to which parents manipulate the sex ratio of their progeny in relation to the availability of resources.

Subfields: Gender Studies

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Citations in the corpus

Born to Learn: the Inspiration, Progress, and Future of Evolved Plastic Artificial Neural Networks (2017, background): “experiments with EPANNs, and more generally for machine learning and AI. It is therefore foreseeable that future EPANNs will have a protected childhood during which parental guidance may be provided (Clutton-Brock, 1991; Klug and Bonsall, 2010; Eskridge and Hougen, 2012). E. Evolving neuromodulation”
John Maynard Smith and the importance of consistency in evolutionary game theory (2006, background): “Model 2 is discussed in Krebs and Davies (1991) Clutton-Brock (1991) and Clutton-Brock and Godfray (1991).”
Parental investment, sexual selection and sex ratios (2008, methodology): “We assume continuous breeding which allows us to employ a variant of the familiar ‘time in, time out’ framework initiated by Grafen & Sibly (1978) and developed by Clutton-Brock & Parker (1992) (for other uses see Parker & Simmons, 1996; Wiklund et al.”
Factors affecting maternal care in an income breeder, the European roe deer (2000, background): “…allocation theory (Williams 1966), the level of pre- and postnatal maternal care may vary according to maternal attributes like body weight or parity, litter size, o spring sex, and may also be a ected by environmental factors like weather and population density (reviewed by Clutton-Brock 1991).”
Current brood size and residual reproductive value predict offspring desertion in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides (2009, background): “…desertion can be viewed as an adaptive life-history decision (Williams 1966; Pianka and Parker 1975; Székely et al. 1996) in which current offspring are abandoned to defend residual reproductive value (Dawkins and Carlisle 1976; Boucher 1977; Maynard Smith 1977; Clutton-Brock 1991; Hrdy 1999).”
TEMPORAL VARIATION IN SURVIVAL OF MAMMALS: A CASE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CANALIZATION? (2003, background): “Regulation and stochastic variation coexist and interact in most natural populations (Clutton-Brock and Albon 1985). While our analysis focused on stochastic variation in a density-independent model, Fowler (1987) and Eb rhardt (2002) reported, in their review of density dependence in large mammals,”
Honest begging: expanding from Signal of Need (2011, background): “…such traits are also used to solicit a few commodities other than nutrition (e.g., parental warmth, see Evans 1994; Weary and Fraser 1995), most studies focus on food because offspring fitness is often limited by rapid growth and development (Lack 1947; Clutton-Brock 1991; Mock and Parker 1997).”
Predator-induced reductions in nest visitation rates are modified by forest cover and food availability (2008, background): “Nest predation provides a logical selective force shaping avian life-history traits, which are thought to reflect fitness trade-offs between the costs and benefits associated with providing care ( Clutton-Brock 1991; Roff 1992).”
How does environmental variation influence body mass, body size, and body condition? Roe deer as a case study (2006, background): “females have been previously highlighted in highly dimorphic and polygynous ungulates in which different tactics of energy allocation to growth and reproduction are observed among sexes (see Clutton-Brock 1991 for a review). For instance, Post et al. (1999) reported that earlier plant phenology, and”
Kin Selection and the Evolutionary Theory of Aging (2007, background): “hypothesis in these species Packer et al. (1998)”
Patterns of multiple paternity and maternity in fishes (2011, background): “This strategy is common in many cichlids and sticklebacks, for example, in which males build nests and tend developing broods (Clutton-Brock, 1991).”
How do caring parents respond to mate loss? Differential response by males and females (2005, background): “Nevertheless, biparental care occurs sporadically in a wide range of animal taxa and thus clearly can evolve given the right conditions (Clutton-Brock 1991).”
Women's lives there, here, then, now: a review of women's ecological and demographic constraints cross-culturally (2005, background): “…(as in elephant seals), or when resources or parental investment can influence the reproductive success of one sex more than the other, there should be a correlation between parental condition and investment in that sex (Low, 2000b; a restatement of Trivers & Willard, 1973; Clutton-Brock, 1991).”
Parental condition, brood sex ratio and differential young survival: an experimental study in gulls (Larus fuscus) (2000, background): “ing of offspring of one sex by the parents, or to differential vulnerability of one sex to poor parental investment or unfavourable rearing conditions (Clutton-Brock 1991).”