Antagonistic parent-offspring co-adaptation

• Published in: PloS one 2010-01, Vol.5 (1), p.e8606-e8606
• Main Authors: Kölliker, Mathias, Ridenhour, Benjamin J, Gaba, Sabrina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptation; Adaptation, Physiological; Analysis; Biological Evolution; Birds; Breeding success; Cellular Biology; Coadaptation; Conflict (Psychology); Conflict resolution; Developmental stages; Divergence; Ecology/Behavioral Ecology; Ecology/Theoretical Ecology; Equivalence; Evolution; Evolution (Biology); Evolutionary Biology/Animal Behavior; Genes; Genetic aspects; Genetic effects; Genetic engineering; Life Sciences; Mammals; Models, Theoretical; Offspring; Parent-child relations; Parent-offspring interactions; Parental behavior; Parents; Parents & parenting; Passer domesticus; Provisioning; Quantitative genetics; Reproduction; Stochastic Processes; Stochasticity; Taxa; Trends
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008606

In species across taxa, offspring have means to influence parental investment (PI). PI thus evolves as an interacting phenotype and indirect genetic effects may strongly affect the co-evolutionary dynamics of offspring and parental behaviors. Evolutionary theory focused on explaining how exaggerated offspring solicitation can be understood as resolution of parent-offspring conflict, but the evolutionary origin and diversification of different forms of family interactions remains unclear. In contrast to previous theory that largely uses a static approach to predict how "offspring individuals" and "parental individuals" should interact given conflict over PI, we present a dynamic theoretical framework of antagonistic selection on the PI individuals obtain/take as offspring and the PI they provide as parents to maximize individual lifetime reproductive success; we analyze a deterministic and a stochastic version of this dynamic framework. We show that a zone for equivalent co-adaptation outcomes exists in which stable levels of PI can evolve and be maintained despite fast strategy transitions and ongoing co-evolutionary dynamics. Under antagonistic co-adaptation, cost-free solicitation can evolve as an adaptation to emerging preferences in parents. We show that antagonistic selection across the offspring and parental life-stage of individuals favors co-adapted offspring and parental behavior within a zone of equivalent outcomes. This antagonistic parent-offspring co-adaptation does not require solicitation to be costly, allows for rapid divergence and evolutionary novelty and potentially explains the origin and diversification of the observed provisioning forms in family life.