Symposium number: 04

Title: MALE AND FEMALE CONTRIBUTIONS TO BIPARENTAL CARE

Principal organizer: Keith Hamer
University of Leeds, School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
email: k.c.hamer@leeds.ac.uk

Second organizer: Douglas Mock
University of Oklahoma, 730 Van Vleet Oval,Room 314, Norman, OK73019, United States

First keynote speaker: Tamas Szekely
University of Bath, Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom
Title of first keynote paper: Sexual conflict over parental care

Second keynote speaker: Keith Hamer
University of Leeds, School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
Title of second keynote paper: Sex differences in contributions to biparental care: Does size matter?

Contributed talks

Symposium description: Over 85% of bird species are socially monogamous, both parents investing substantially in parental care to ensure that offspring are reared successfully. This mating system is commonly considered dull in comparison with those involving polygamy or co operative breeding. Yet recent studies of monogamous species have revealed a surprisingly rich array of strategies and complex variation involving the relative contributions of male and female to incubation and food provisioning, the consistency or otherwise of individual parental effort, and the quality of the parents.
This symposium aims to draw this work together to provide a broader, more coherent perspective, to identify common principles emerging from different studies, and to highlight key research directions for the future. The first keynote speaker will use recent phylogenetic comparative analyses and field experiments to address the question of why parents of some species cooperate to raise their young, but not others. The second keynote speaker will consider the relative contributions of male and female parents to offspring care, using seabirds as a model for long lived species with low annual reproductive output and high levels of social and genetic monogamy.

back to list of symposia

Home | Scientific Programme | Officers | Venue | Accommodation | Tours | Past Congresses