PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - S.M. Caro
AU  - A.C. Velasco
AU  - T. van Mastrigt
AU  - K. van Oers
AU  - A.S. Griffin
AU  - S.A. West
AU  - C.A. Hinde
TI  - Parental control: ecology drives plasticity in parental response to offspring signals
AID  - 10.1101/2021.11.18.464426
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.11.18.464426
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/19/2021.11.18.464426.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/19/2021.11.18.464426.full
AB  - Different bird species have completely different parent-offspring interactions. When food is plentiful, the chicks that are begging the loudest are fed the most. When food is scarce, bird species instead feed the largest offspring. While this variation could be due to parents responding to signalling differently based on food availability, it could equally be due to offspring adjusting their behaviour, or to variation in information availability. We tested between these competing explanations experimentally, by manipulating food availability in a population of wild great tits, Parus major, while standardising offspring behaviour and size. We found that when food was more plentiful, parents were: (1) more likely to preferentially feed the chicks that were begging the most; and (2) less likely to preferentially feed larger chicks. In addition, we consistently found these same patterns, in a meta-analysis across 57 bird species. Overall, our results suggest that parents have more control over food distribution than offspring do, and that they flexibly adjust how they respond to both offspring signals and cues of offspring quality in response to food availability. Consequently, depending upon environmental conditions, predictably different signalling systems are favoured.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.