Context-dependent joint buffering of abiotic stress by parental care and sibling interactions

Title data

Huber, Paul ; Betz, Floyd ; Cordes, Saskia ; Hoffmann, Hannah Charlotte ; Klinghammer, Enna Lucile ; Steiger, Sandra:
Context-dependent joint buffering of abiotic stress by parental care and sibling interactions.
In: Functional Ecology. (2026) .
ISSN 1365-2435
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.70438

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Abstract in another language

Climate change represents one of the most complex challenges of the 21st century,
increasing global temperatures and the occurrence of extreme events, such
as heatwaves, cold snaps, floods or droughts. These changes exert significant pressure
on biological systems, often resulting in altered behavioural patterns and impairments
in fecundity, reproductive success and offspring survival.
2. The evolution of parental care is hypothesized to represent an adaptive response
to environmental challenges, with the potential to buffer offspring performance
against stressors such as thermal extremes. While parental care is long regarded
as the major evolutionary driver for family groups, an increasing number of studies
highlight the beneficial effects of sibling interactions on offspring development,
raising interest in sibling cooperation as an early driver of social life.
3. Here, we tested whether the fitness consequences of sibling interactions depend
on abiotic environmental conditions and whether sibling interactions buffer offspring
against environmental stress, act synergistically with parental care or lose
their beneficial effects under harsh conditions. To this end, we examined larval
performance in the subsocial burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. In two separate
experiments, we manipulated the presence or absence of parents and siblings
and exposed offspring to either temperature or soil moisture extremes.
4. The capacity of cooperative behaviours to mitigate the effects of environmental
stress depended strongly on environmental context, social constellation and the
trait considered. Under low temperatures, parental care and sibling cooperation
acted synergistically to buffer larval mass, whereas the benefits of sibling interactions
disappeared in the absence of parents. In contrast, high temperatures
reduced offspring performance when parents and siblings were present simultaneously
but did not diminish the benefits associated with sibling interactions in the
absence of parental care.
5. Our findings demonstrate that the effects of social interactions under environmental
stress are highly context dependent. Rather than consistently promoting
or disrupting cooperation, abiotic stress modified the strength and expression of social effects across environmental conditions and social constellations.
These results highlight the importance of sociality for resilience to environmental
change, while showing that its buffering capacity is conditional rather than
universal.