Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

6215

Date

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Biology

Committee Chair

Emerson Keith Bowers

Committee Member

Michael Ferkin

Committee Member

David Freeman

Abstract

In any family, conflict between care-givers arises over how much to invest in their shared genetic kin. We examined this conflict in a wild population of house wrens (Troglodytes aedon), recording parental behaviour twice for each nest monitoring shifts with nestling age, assessing female response to male behaviour and nestling begging. Early in nestling development, maternal provisioning was responsive to male provisioning but not nestling begging. Later in development, females increased the frequency of provisioning and inspecting her surroundings with both the reduction of male provisioning and increases in begging; resulting in less time brooding which delayed fledging age. While males that provisioned more were less likely to breed the next year. Our data suggest that sexual conflict elicits changes in female care through direct observation of their mate, but that the multimodal nature of care and division of labour between mates may necessitate a reassessment of conflict over biparental care.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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