PSYC 3420 Lecture Notes - Mate Choice, Fetus, Parental Investment
11 Mar 2013
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Document Summary
From an evolutionary perspective, offspring are a sort of vehicle for their parents. They are the means by which their parents" genes may get transported to succeeding generations. Evolution, in short, should produce a rich repertoire of parental mechanisms specially adapted to caring for offspring. Given the costs of parental care, it is reasonable to expect that whenever we do observe parental care in nature, the reproductive benefits must be large enough to outweigh the costs. An example of adaptations for parental care is found in nesting birds. Tinbergen (1963) explored the puzzle of why nesting birds would go to the trouble of removing the broken shells from their newly hatched chicks, taking them piece by piece far away from the nest. Tinbergen discovered that only the protection from predator"s hypothesis received support. The cost of parental support care was outweighed by the benefits of increased survival of chicks through a decrease in predation.
