Sexual Division of Antibacterial Resource Defence in Breeding Burying Beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides

1. A key component of parental care involves defending resources destined for offspring from a diverse array of potential interspecific competitors, such as social parasites, fungi and bacteria. 2. Just as with other aspects of parental care, such as offspring provisioning or brood defence, sexual c...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of animal ecology 2010-01, Vol.79 (1), p.35-43
Main Authors: Cotter, Sheena C., Kilner, Rebecca M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal ecology
Animal reproduction
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Animals
Anti-Infective Agents - metabolism
Antibacterial activity
Antibacterials
Beetles
Behavioural Ecology
Biological and medical sciences
biparental care
Breeding
Brood parasitism
Carcasses
Carrion
Coleoptera - metabolism
Coleoptera - microbiology
Competition
Ecology
Exudates
Female
Female animals
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Fungi
General aspects
Hormones
Insect behavior
Insecta
Insects
Invertebrates
Juvenile hormones
lysozyme
Male
Male animals
Mating behavior
Nicrophorus
Parasites
Parents & parenting
partial compensation
Phenoloxidase
phenotypic plasticity
Progeny
Reproduction
Sex
Sex Characteristics
Sexual Behavior, Animal
social immunity
Widowed status
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:1. A key component of parental care involves defending resources destined for offspring from a diverse array of potential interspecific competitors, such as social parasites, fungi and bacteria. 2. Just as with other aspects of parental care, such as offspring provisioning or brood defence, sexual conflict between parents may arise over how to share the costs of this form of care. There has been little previous work, however, to investigate how this particular burden might be shared. 3. Here, we describe a hitherto uncharacterized form of parental care in burying beetles Nicrophorus vespilloides, a species which prepares carrion for its young and faces competition from microbes for this resource. We found that parents defend the carcass with antibacterial anal exudates, and that the antibacterial activity of these exudates is only upregulated following the discovery of a corpse. At the same time, phenoloxidase activity in the anal exudates is downregulated, indicating parallels with the internal insect immune system. 4. In unmanipulated breeding pairs, females had higher antibacterial activity in their anal exudates than males, suggesting sex-specific roles in this aspect of parental care. 5. When we experimentally widowed males, we found that they increased levels of antibacterial activity in their anal exudates. Experimentally widowing females, however, led them to decrease levels of antibacterial activity in their anal exudates. Widowed beetles of each sex thus produced anal exudates of comparable antibacterial activity. We suggest that this flexible division of antibacterial activity may be coordinated by Juvenile Hormone.
ISSN:0021-8790
1365-2656
DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2009.01593.x