Such behavioral flexibility in parental care is currently known almost exclusively in biparental species, especially where parental desertion or care reduction by 1 parent is relatively common.
Flexible compensatory parental care is mainly known in biparental species, particularly where parental desertion or reduction of care by 1 parent is common.
Thus, one should expect major fitness benefits of compensatory parental behavior for both sexes, increasing with the risk of parental desertion and with decreasing costs of care.
This was based on a study of 99 healthy adults who reported childhood exposure to stressors such as parental death or desertion, abuse or neglect by the parent, or parental detachment, coldness, or rejection.
Year, parental care strategy (male care, female care, and biparental desertion), sex of the offspring, and level of EPP ('paternity') were included in these models as fixed effects, and brood ID was included as a random effect.
Thus, in species where sex-specific parental roles have evolved, the loss of one parent, either because of active brood desertion or due to death, might lead to a spontaneous change of the sex-specific caring behavior in the remaining parent.
"Genetic monogamy lowers the risk of parasite transmission," says Munclinger. "It also lowers the risk of partner desertion, which is very important in species with extensive parental care of both sexes".
We considered parental response a binary response (either egg ejection or acceptance); however, including desertion as a potential response (cf. Hauber et al. 2014; Samas et al. 2014) did not alter our conclusions (results not shown).
We analyzed within-population variation in offspring desertion in a small passerine bird that exhibits one of the most complex parental care systems in birds.
Therefore, within-population variation in parental care emerges by sexually different mechanisms; between-individual variation was responsible for the observed pattern of offspring desertion in females, whereas within-individual variation was responsible for the observed pattern in males.
Theories on parental decision making suggest that such compensatory behavior by A. femoralis females could be exploited by males through clutch desertion (cf. Székely et al. 1996, Barta et al. 2002).
