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A Parental Volatile Pheromone Triggers Offspring Begging in a Burying Beetle.

ABSTRACT: Parental care is a notable aspect of reproductive effort in many animals. The interaction between offspring begging and the parental feeding response is an important communication mechanism that regulates offspring food supply, and reducing the cost of superfluous begging is beneficial to both parents and offspring. Here we concluded that parents of the burying beetle Nicrophorus quadripunctatus inform their offspring of their preparation for provisioning by emitting "provisioning pheromone." Female parents emitted an antimicrobial aromatic compound, 2-phenoxyethanol, in their regurgitation before provisioning, and this compound elicits begging behavior from their offspring. Furthermore, begging incurs growth and survival costs, and parents spent more than 85% of their time in close proximity to their offspring without provisioning. Therefore, it is suggested that limiting offspring begging during provisioning is beneficial to both parents and offspring. We report here a novel aspect of parent-offspring communication in family life.

SUBMITTER: Takata M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6831812 | biostudies-other | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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A Parental Volatile Pheromone Triggers Offspring Begging in a Burying Beetle.

Takata Mamoru M Mitaka Yuki Y Steiger Sandra S Mori Naoki N

iScience 20190911

Parental care is a notable aspect of reproductive effort in many animals. The interaction between offspring begging and the parental feeding response is an important communication mechanism that regulates offspring food supply, and reducing the cost of superfluous begging is beneficial to both parents and offspring. Here we concluded that parents of the burying beetle Nicrophorus quadripunctatus inform their offspring of their preparation for provisioning by emitting "provisioning pheromone." Fe ...[more]

PMID: 31521616

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Project description:Abstract Understanding the genetic influences of traits of nonmodel organisms is crucial to understanding how novel traits arise. Do new traits require new genes or are old genes repurposed? How predictable is this process? Here, we examine this question for gene expression influencing parenting behavior in a beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides. Parental care, produced from many individual behaviors, should be influenced by changes of expression of multiple genes, and one suggestion is that the genes can be predicted based on knowledge of behavior expected to be precursors to parental care, such as aggression, resource defense, and mating on a resource. Thus, testing gene expression during parental care allows us to test expectations of this “precursor hypothesis” for multiple genes and traits. We tested for changes of the expression of serotonin, octopamine/tyramine, and dopamine receptors, as well as one glutamate receptor, predicting that these gene families would be differentially expressed during social interactions with offspring and associated resource defense. We found that serotonin receptors were strongly associated with social and aggression behavioral transitions. Octopamine receptors produced a complex picture of gene expression over a reproductive cycle. Dopamine was not associated with the behavioral transitions sampled here, while the glutamate receptor was most consistent with a behavioral change of resource defense/aggression. Our results generate new hypotheses, refine candidate lists for further studies, and inform the genetic mechanisms that are co‐opted during the evolution of parent–offspring interactions, a likely evolutionary path for many lineages that become fully social. The precursor hypothesis, while not perfect, does provide a starting point for identifying candidate genes. Predicting gene function of nonmodel organisms is necessary to understanding how novel phenotypes arise and how conserved genetic mechanisms are. We tested whether neurotransmitter receptor expression can be predicted from known associations from previously studied organisms during parental care. Some neurotransmitters showed high predictability (serotonin, glutamate), while other did not (octopamine, dopamine).

Dataset Information

A Parental Volatile Pheromone Triggers Offspring Begging in a Burying Beetle.

Publications

A Parental Volatile Pheromone Triggers Offspring Begging in a Burying Beetle.

Similar Datasets

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