Paternal care

The respective contributions of males and females to raising the common offspring, greatly influences a species' mating system. Usually the more caring females are also more choosy when it comes to matings, while the males compete for access to the females. Especially in mammals parental care is heavily female biased, since only the female can provide milk for the newly-born. Young birds, however, are raised on a less specific diet and both parents can provide for the young and regularly do so. In a few bird-species the balance is even tipped towards the male, who cares for the young predominantly or solely. Keen to understand the interaction between such extreme levels of paternal care and a species' mating system I chose to study the pheasant coucal for my PhD. This non-parasitic cuckoo species had previously been reported to show predominantly male care and my data confirmed and quantified this finding (paper in prep.).

Incubating male pheasant coucal