The evolution of parental care and egg size: a comparative analysis in frogs

ECU Author/Contributor (non-ECU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)

Heather Heying (Creator)

Christian Sea McKeon (Creator)

Kyle Summers (Creator)

Institution

East Carolina University (ECU )

Web Site: http://www.ecu.edu/lib/

Abstract: The evolution of parental care and egg size has attracted considerable attention and theoretical debate. Several different hypotheses have been proposed concerning the trajectories of parental care and egg size evolution and the order of specific evolutionary transitions. Few comparative studies have investigated the predictions of these hypotheses. Here we investigate the evolutionary association between parental care and egg size in frogs in a phylogenetic context. Data on egg size and presence or absence of parental care in various species of frogs was gathered from the scientific literature. As a basis for our comparative analyses we developed a phylogenetic supertree by combining the results of multiple phylogenetic analyses in the literature using matrix representation parsimony. Using phylogenetic pairwise comparisons we demonstrated a significant association between the evolution of parental care and large egg size. We then used recently developed maximum likelihood methods to infer the evolutionary order of specific transitions. This analysis revealed that the evolution of large egg size typically precedes the evolution of parental care rather than the reverse. We discuss the relevance of our results to previous hypotheses concerning the evolution of parental care and egg size. Originally published Proc Biol Sci Vol. 273 No. 1587 Mar 2006

Additional Information

Publication

Other

Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences. 273:1587(March 2006) p. 687-692.

Language: English

Date: 2011

Keywords

parental care, egg size, Anurans, phylogenetic supertree, pairwise comparisons

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