ABS 2023
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Competition with vertebrate scavengers’ delays return to parental care in a burying beetle
Casey Patmore, Georgia Lambert, Charlotte Noonan, Per T Smiseth. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Competition over rare and limited resources is an important evolutionary driver of behaviour. One such resource found in nature are carrion carcasses, which the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides depends on to breed. However, these carcasses are highly valuable and often bring these beetles into conflict with other species, including opportunistic vertebrate scavengers. Little is know about how such interactions inform decision-making in�N. vespilloides. Here, we test whether this includes facultative adjustments to parental care. We found that parents were slower to provide care when given cues that indicated vertebrate scavengers were present. Despite this, we found there was no difference in the amount of care parents provided, or in resulting larval fitness. Our results are consistent with previous work that shows while vertebrate competition does trigger a strong immediate response, any long-term adjustments in parental behaviour are limited. This suggests that the selective pressure for long-term adjustments are weak, and we find evidence that they may instead rely on non-facultative behaviours such as concealing carrion to deal with asymmetric competition.