Academics

Abstract  

Past and current research have revealed that parental care is rare among species. In this review article, I am going to analyze the reasons that parental care might be rare among most species, and then dive into the evolutionary processes that allowed a certain subset of species to develop some mode of parental care. Parental care can come in many forms, whether it is only maternal care or only paternal care, or both, as in biparental care. The purpose of this review is not going to be differentiating between the different modes of parental care, rather, it is going to be looking at how species are able to afford parental care altogether as it is supposedly rare. Initially, I will be providing reasons as to why many species do not provide parental care due to the parents’ associated costs, such as reduced future reproduction or the amount of energy that is required, lowering parents’ fitness. I will then use many different species to analyze why parental care might have evolved or changed overtime, such as from no care to uniparental care (male or female only) or uniparental care to biparental care. It was revealed that there are many trade-offs that present themselves when it comes to parental care, which was one barrier species had to deal with or overcome for parental care to be worthwhile. This review looks at similar patterns that were seen in different species to try to trace factors that led to the emergence of parental care, even with the costs involved. Overall, it was the fact that the benefits to the offspring, increasing parents’ lifetime fitness, must outweigh the costs to the parents for parental care to evolve and be consistent in species.

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