![]() We suggest that this flexible ancestral strategy may have allowed rapid response to changing environmental conditions which might explain the diversity in parental care strategies that we see in the digger wasps today. We find that the ancestral state is not the simplest, but may be the most flexible strategy. Contrary to expectations, we show that parental care in this group has not increased in complexity over evolutionary time. In this study, we use phylogenetic methods to reconstruct the evolution of the diverse parental care strategies exhibited by the subsocial digger wasps (Sphecidae). Despite the importance of insect parental care for shaping the evolution of sociality, relatively few studies have attempted to reconstruct how different strategies evolve in the insects. Parental care behaviour leads to prolonged associations between parents and offspring, which is thought to drive the evolution of social living. We discuss the possibility that ancestral plasticity has played a role in the evolution of extended parental care. Progressive provisioning has evolved several times independently, but transitions away from it appear rare. We find that evolution has not always followed this model: reverse transitions are common, and the ancestral state is the most flexible rather than the simplest strategy. The strategies we focus on were previously thought of in terms of a stepping-stone model in which complexity increases during evolution, ending with progressive provisioning which is a likely precursor to eusociality. We show that this diversity stems from multiple independent transitions between states. These strategies range from placing a single prey item in a pre-existing cavity to mass provisioning a pre-built nest, through to complex progressive provisioning where a female feeds larvae in different nests simultaneously as they grow. The subsocial sphecid wasps are a useful group in which to study parental care because of the diverse range of strategies they exhibit. Macroevolutionary patterns remain obscure, however, due to the few rigorous phylogenetic analyses. ![]() Insect parental care strategies are particularly diverse, and prolonged association between parents and offspring may be a key precursor to the evolution of complex social traits. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |