Infanticide, sexual selection and task specialization in a biparental burying beetle
Author(s):
STEPHEN T. TRUMBO
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut
There are few behaviors for which our perspective has changed so much as for infanticide. Although biologists today accept infanticide as adaptive, there is disagreement in many cases over the causes of infanticide. This study of burying beetles investigated two causes of infanticide, resource competition and sexual selection. When the potentially infanticidal intruder was of a different species, only resource competition was important. When the intruder was of the same species but of opposite sex there was a possibility of sexual selection as well. In sexually selected infanticide, the intruder will kill the resident’s offspring and then pair with the resident to produce a replacement brood. Where both resource competition and sexual selection were operating in burying beetles, infanticide was more common. It is hypothesized that the ability to produce a replacement brood with the intruder reduces the motivation to protect the young and leads to a higher incidence of infanticide.
DOI (Digital Object Identifier, will open in another window)::
doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2006.05.004
