Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Parental Care, Offspring Abandonment, And Filial Cannibalism, Mackenzie Davenport

Honors Theses

Parental care is a fundamental life-history trait that is found in many animals (reviewed in Royle et al. 2012). Parental care can include behaviors such as egg cleaning (Knouft et al. 2003), egg guarding (Royle et al. 2012, pg. 4), egg provisioning (Simmons & Parker 1989; Hilker & Meiners 2002; Royle et al. 2012, pg. 2), and oviposition-site selection (Refsnider & Janzen 2010). Such forms of parental care typically result in the spatial clumping of parents and their offspring. This often leads to density effects on within-clutch egg mortality, meaning that when within-clutch egg density increases, egg mortality also increases. …