Exclusive paternal care is the rarest form of parental investment in nature and theory predicts that the maintenance of this behavior depends on the balance between costs and benefits to males. Our goal was to assess costs ...

Males are generally predicted to care less for their young when they have more additional mating opportunities, lower paternity, or when their mates care more. We tested these predictions using male provisioning as a proxy ...

Extra-pair behavior is present in 76% of socially monogamous bird species with biparental care. This behavior may produce costs to females related to a reduction in paternal care. We estimated the percentage of extra-pair ...

Among primates, intense paternal care is manifested in only a few distantly related species, including humans. Thus, neither purely phylogenetic nor socioecological hypotheses can explain its presence or the variability ...

Understanding the evolution of mating systems, a central topic in evolutionary biology for more than 50 years, requires examining the genetic consequences of mating and the relationships between social systems and mating ...

Parental care increases offspring survival, but may impose costs by decreasing adult survival or mating opportunities. Because individuals have limited resources, time allocation and risk decisions are expected to vary ...

Female mate choice is often based on male traits, including signals or behaviors, and/or the quality of a male's territory. In species with obligate paternal care, where care directly affects offspring survival, females ...