Zoltán Barta, Tamás Székely, András Liker, Freya Harrison
Biparental care of offspring is a widespread social behavior, and various ecological, life-history, and demographic factors have been proposed to explain its evolution and maintenance. Raising offspring generally requires several types of care (e.g., feeding, brooding, and defense), and males and females often specialize in providing different types of care. However, theoretical models of care often assume that care is a single variable and hence that a unit of care by the mother is interchangeable with a unit of care by the father...
June 2014: American Naturalist