Biology subjects

Moss, J. B.

Publications and source records attributed to Moss, J. B..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

Co-option of ancestral signal elements in the evolution of a cooperative parental behavior

The emergence of complex social interactions is predicted to be an important selective force in the diversification of communication systems. Parental care presents a key social context in which to study the evolution of novel signals, as care often requires communication and behavioral coordination between parents and is an evolutionary stepping-stone towards increasingly complex social systems. Anuran amphibians (frogs and toads) are a classic model of acoustic communication and the vocal repertoires of many species have been characterized in the contexts of advertisement, courtship, and aggression; yet quantitative descriptions of calls elicited in the context of parental care are lacking. The biparental poison frog, Ranitomeya imitator, exhibits a remarkable parenting behavior in which females, cued by the calls of their male partners, feed tadpoles unfertilized eggs. Here, we characterized and compared calls across three social contexts, for the first time including a parental care context. We found that egg feeding calls share some properties with both advertisement and courtship calls but also had unique properties. Multivariate analysis revealed high classification success for advertisement and courtship calls but misclassified nearly half of egg feeding calls as either advertisement or courtship calls, suggesting additional signal modalities play a role in parental communication. Egg feeding and courtship calls both contained less identity information than advertisement calls, as expected for signals used in close-range communication where uncertainty about identity is low. Taken together, egg feeding calls likely borrowed and recombined elements of both ancestral call types to solicit a novel, context-dependent parenting response. Significance StatementParental care has evolved independently in every major animal lineage and represents a major step in the evolution of complex sociality. Communication systems may need to increase in complexity. To explore these ideas, we characterized calls associated with trophic egg feeding, a unique cooperative parental behavior in the biparental mimic poison frog and compared them to calls associated with mate attraction (advertisement and courtship calls). Our analysis revealed some distinct, but many shared properties of signals elicited during egg feeding, suggesting that signals deployed in a novel social context evolve via modification and recombination of existing signals. These findings deepen our understanding of the relationship between complexity of social and communication systems.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2021

Patterns of parent and offspring gene expression reflect canalization, not plasticity, in response to environmental stress

Parenting is thought to evolve to buffer offspring from variable, unpredictable, and challenging environmental conditions. In the subsocial carrion beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis, stressful temperatures during parenting do not affect parental behavior despite imposing steep fitness costs to parents. Here, we ask if plasticity of gene expression underpins this behavioral stability or facilitates independent compensation by larvae. To test this we characterized gene expression of parents and offspring before and during active parenting under benign (20{degrees}C) and stressful (24{degrees}C) temperatures to identify genes of parents and offspring associated with thermal response, parenting/being parented, and gene expression plasticity associated with behavioral stability of parental care. The main effects of thermal and social condition each shaped patterns of gene expression in females, males, and larvae. In addition, we implicated 79 genes in females as buffering parental behavior across environments. The majority of these underwent significant changes in expression in actively parenting mothers at the benign temperature, but not at the stressful temperature. Our results suggest that neither genetic programs for parenting nor their effects on offspring gene expression are fundamentally different under stressful conditions, and that behavioral stability is associated primarily with the maintenance of existing genetic programs rather than replacement or supplementation. Thus, while selection for compensatory gene expression could expand the range of thermal conditions parents will tolerate, without expanding the toolkit of genes involved selection is unlikely to lead to adaptive changes of function.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2021

Constrained flexibility of parental cooperation limits evolutionary responses to harsh conditions

Parental care is predicted to evolve to mitigate harsh environments, thus adaptive plasticity of care may be an important response to climate change. In biparental species, fitness costs may be reduced with plasticity of behavior among partners. We investigated this prediction with the burying beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis, by exposing them to contrasting benign and harsh thermal environments. We found strong fitness costs under the harsh environment, but rather than select for more care, visualized selection was stabilizing. Examining different components of care revealed positive directional selection gradients for direct care and strong stabilizing selection gradients for indirect care, resulting in constrained evolutionary responses. Further, because males and females did not coordinate their investments, the potential for adaptive plasticity was not enhanced under biparental care. Females cared at capacity with or without male partners, while males with partners reduced direct care but maintained indirect care levels. Decision rules were not altered in different environments, suggesting no shift from sexual conflict to cooperation. We suggest that the potential for parenting to ameliorate the effects of our climate crisis may depend on the sex-specific evolutionary drivers of parental care, and that this may be best reflected in components of care.

evolutionary biology↗