Offspring overcome poor parenting by being better parents

Abstract

The evolutionary repercussions of parental effects are often discussed as static effects that can have negative influences on offspring fitness that may even persist across generations. However, individuals are not passive recipients and may mitigate the persistence of parental effects through their behaviour. Here, we tested how the burying beetle Nicrophorus orbicollis, a species with complex parental care, responded to poor parenting. We manipulated the duration of parental care received and measured the impact on traits of both F1 and F2 offspring. As expected, reducing parental care negatively affected traits that are ecologically important for burying beetles, including F1 offspring development time and body size. However, F1 parents that received reduced care as larvae spent more time feeding F2 offspring than parents that received full care as larvae. As a result, both the number and mass of F2 offspring were unaffected by the developmental experience of their parents. Our results show that flexible parental care may be able to overcome poor developmental environments and limit negative parental effects to a single generation.