Environmental risks make parents more protective

Parental care is not hard-wired into a species but can change depending on the riskiness of the environment, finds a new study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

Scientists at Oxford University used mathematical models to analyze how mortality rates influence the degree of care parents give their offspring.

Researchers discovered that unpredictable environments caused parents to be much more caring and protective in order to ensure the survival of their offspring.

"What this new research shows is that many more species are likely to ‘hedge their bets’, changing how much they care for their offspring depending on how challenging the environment is," said Dr. Mike Bonsall, author of the study.

The team set out to investigate how parental care evolved from a neglectful state in which parents leave offspring to fend for themselves. Using mathematical models, the researchers looked at the costs and benefits of increased parental care in increasingly unpredictable environments.

"People tend to think of parental care as something that is ‘hard-wired’…either species care for their young or not. What our research shows is the precarious balance between the costs and benefits of caring which may have caused parental care to have evolved, or been lost, many times in the history of life," said Dr. Bonsall.