Food availability is known to influence parental care and mating systems in passerine birds. Altricial chicks make uni-parental care particularly demanding for passerines and parental investment is known to increase with decreasing food availability. We expect this to limit uni-parental passerines to habitats with the most consistent food availability. In passerine birds, species having uni-parental care are primarily female-only parental care (female-only care) and most passerine birds with female-only care are frugivores. We predict that frugivorous passerines with female-only care should be restricted to the most stable habitats characterized by longer fruiting season length. At a global scale, female-only care frugivores were distributed in areas with significantly longer fruiting seasons than non-female-only care frugivores. Female-only care species richness had a stronger spatial relationship with longer fruiting season than non-female-only care species richness. Verifying the lack of a phylogenetic signal driving this pattern, our findings indicate that the geographic distribution of female-only care, a geographically and phylogenetically widespread parental care system, is restricted by an extrinsic factor: fruiting season length. This reinstates the importance of food availability on the evolution and maintenance of parental care systems in passerine birds.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America;Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America;Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America
Recommended Citation:
Sahas Barve,Frank A. La Sorte. Fruiting Season Length Restricts Global Distribution of Female-Only Parental Care in Frugivorous Passerine Birds[J]. PLOS ONE,2016-01-01,11(5)