The animal kingdom exhibits a diversity of behaviors, so we can find some species that take care of their puppies and others that throw them into the world or devour them if necessary. A team of scientists set out to investigate the effects of parental care among animals that take care of their offspring on their evolution.
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The article recently published in the journal BioRxiv summarizes the study by researchers at the University of Cambridge. In this case, the interest of the scholars was to investigate how the behavior of caring for the puppies influences genetic mutations.
For this, they chose to observe the species of beetles Nicrophorus Vespilloides.
It is a species that feeds on the carcass of dead animals and helps in their decomposition. The choice of species was due to the fact that these beetles tend to take care of their larvae for a long time. They even feed them. Therefore, the scientists separated two groups of beetles.
In the first, there was parental care. In the second, no.
Early observations showed that beetles without parental care developed more immediate mutations, such as beak elongation to better feed. These mutations account for the need to survive in nature in the absence of parents. Despite this, the interest was to observe the “mutation load”.
Effects on mutation load
This is the term for observing the number of genetic mutations in a species relative to its ancestors. While beetles without parental assistance had more immediate mutations, the mutation load was relatively lower than those that had "parent" care.
According to the scientists, this was a predictable reality, since, in common sense, it is easy to see that the presence of the parents influences the mutation of the species. Thus, it could be attested that when removing caregivers, a series of mutations is also removed. What is also worth remembering is that not all of these mutations are positive.