The evolution of parental care and egg size: a comparative analysis in frogs
Author
Summers, Kyle; McKeon, Christian Sea; Heying, Heather
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
Date
2006-03-22
Citation:
APA:
Summers, Kyle, & McKeon, Christian Sea, & Heying, Heather. (March 2006).
The evolution of parental care and egg size: a comparative analysis in frogs.
Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences,
273(1587),
687-
692. Retrieved from
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3096
MLA:
Summers, Kyle, and McKeon, Christian Sea, and Heying, Heather.
"The evolution of parental care and egg size: a comparative analysis in frogs". Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences.
273:1587. (687-692),
March 2006.
October 03, 2023.
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3096.
Chicago:
Summers, Kyle and McKeon, Christian Sea and Heying, Heather,
"The evolution of parental care and egg size: a comparative analysis in frogs," Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences 273, no.
1587 (March 2006),
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3096 (accessed
October 03, 2023).
AMA:
Summers, Kyle, McKeon, Christian Sea, Heying, Heather.
The evolution of parental care and egg size: a comparative analysis in frogs. Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences.
March 2006;
273(1587):
687-692.
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3096. Accessed
October 03, 2023.
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Publisher
East Carolina University