Objective
Interactions between caring parents and their offspring are among the most widespread and fundamental social behaviours. Surprisingly, however, the underlying genetics, even of well-studied model systems, are largely unknown. Traditionally, behavioural ecologists studying the evolution of parental care have typically focused on how evolutionary conflict between parents and offspring has shaped parental provisioning and offspring solicitation behaviours, while ignoring the underlying genetic mechanisms. Recently, a quantitative genetics perspective has emerged that aims to explicitly model and measure the quantitative genetics underlying parent–offspring interactions, and which emphasises the potential importance of co-adaptation of offspring demand and parental supply in the evolution of parent–offspring interactions. Such parent–offspring co-adaptation is predicted to lead to genetic covariation between parental provisioning and offspring solicitation behaviours. The co-adaptation hypothesis furthermore predicts the presence of fitness costs to parents and/or offspring if the phenotypic correlation between parental and offspring behaviours is disrupted – causing a mismatch between the behavioural responses of parents and offspring. However, few empirical studies have tested these ideas, and the fitness implications and underlying genetics of parent–offspring conflict and co-adaptation are virtually unknown. We propose to integrate approaches from behavioural ecology and quantitative genetics in an ecological setting to remedy this situation: we will investigate the genetics and fitness implications of parent–offspring conflict and co-adaptation in wild blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), which are an ideal model for this purpose. The research outcomes will improve our understanding of how evolutionary conflict and co-adaptation shape social interactions within families.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG
See other projects for this call
Coordinator
9712CP Groningen
Netherlands