Social and co-evolutionary dynamics of mating behaviour and parental care

交配和亲本投资是决定生物体生活史的关键因素。最近的一项调查的实证研究表明，尽管有很长的历史的兴趣和调查，支持预测的交配行为和模式的父母投资之间的关系是穷人。例如，男性预计将减少他们的父母的努力，以响应减少在他们的父权，如果有机会在未来更高的父权，和女性预计将选择男性的基础上，表明他的健身特征。然而，这些预测都没有坚实的经验支持。因此，目前的概念框架的解释能力依赖于事后的解释，而不是能够产生先验的预测。可能的原因是，交配和父母照顾之间的关系的重要组成部分，如两性之间的冲突提供的照顾和父母-后代的行为，已被独立研究，而不考虑他们的相互作用（即不考虑社会和共同进化的反馈回路）。为了能够预测交配行为模式和亲本投资的演变（以及交配系统和生物体的生活史），需要了解每个家庭成员的行为如何受到家庭其他成员行为的影响。在这里，我们建议使用人工选择来测试女性的交配行为如何与男性的照顾共同进化，与母亲的照顾和影响亲子关系的权衡。特别是，我们将研究这些反馈回路如何影响或相互作用的性别之间现有的遗传相关性。这样一个共同进化的方法是必不可少的，以获得更完整的了解生命史进化的动力学基础。我们将在埋葬甲虫Nicrophorus vespilloides中进行这项研究，在那里我们对遗传模式，社会互动和行为进行了大量的初步和背景研究。因此，我们的总体目标是实验测试女性Nicrophorus vespilloides甲虫的重复交配行为的演变如何影响（共同）参与父母的照顾和交配行为的性状的演变。我们提出的工作研究的重要性，个人之间的社会互动，在确定交配和父母照顾行为之间的共同进化关系，从交配系统和相关的生命历史特征的生物体出现作为紧急属性。因此，我们的工作将形成一个重要的垫脚石，朝着发展一个新的范式，了解交配系统的进化和基于家庭成员之间的行为相互作用的生物体的生活史特征。

Mating and parental investment are key factors in determining the life history of an organism. A recent survey of empirical research suggests that despite a long history of interest and investigation, support for predicted relationships between mating behaviour and patterns of parental investment is poor. For example, males are predicted to decrease their parental effort in response to a decrease in their paternity if there are opportunities for higher paternity in the future, and females are expected to choose males based on male traits that indicate his fitness. However, neither of these predictions have firm empirical support. Consequently the explanatory power of the current conceptual framework relies upon post-hoc explanations rather than being able to generate a priori predictions. The likely reason for this is that the components of the relationship between mating and parental care that are important, such as conflict between the sexes over the amount of care to provide and parent-offspring behaviours, have been studied independently without considering their interactions (i.e. without considering social and co-evolutionary feedback loops). To be able to predict the evolution of patterns of mating behaviour and parental investment (and therefore mating systems and the life-histories of organisms) requires an understanding of how the behaviour of each family member is affected by the behaviour of the other members of the family. Here we propose to use artificial selection to test how female mating behaviour co-evolves with male care, trades-off with maternal care and influences parent-offspring relationships. In particular we will examine how these feedback loops affect or interact with the existing genetic correlations between the sexes. Such a co-evolutionary approach is essential to gain a more complete understanding of the dynamics underlying life-history evolution. We will pursue this research in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, where we have considerable preliminary and background research on patterns of inheritance, social interactions, and behaviour. Consequently our overall objective is to test experimentally how evolution of repeated mating behaviour of female Nicrophorus vespilloides beetles affects the (co)evolution of traits involved in parental care and mating behaviour. Our proposed work examines the importance of social interactions among individuals in determining the co-evolutionary relationship between mating and parental care behaviours, from which mating systems and associated life-history traits of organisms arise as emergent properties. Our work will therefore form an important stepping stone towards the development of a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of mating systems and life-history traits of organisms based on behavioural interactions among family members.