Data from: Offspring beg more towards larger females in a burying beetle

Offspring of many animals beg for food from parents. Begging is often
costly, and offspring should seek to reduce such costs to maximise their
returns on begging. Whenever multiple adults provide care for a joint
brood, as in species where multiple females breed communally, offspring
should beg towards the parent that provisions the most food. Here, we
investigate whether larvae spend more time begging towards larger females
in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. Prior work on this species
shows that larger females provision more food than smaller ones,
suggesting that larvae would benefit by preferentially begging towards
larger females. To test for such a preference, we provided experimental
broods with a simultaneous choice between two dead females: a smaller and
a larger one. Larvae spent more time begging towards larger females. We
next examined the behavioural mechanism for why larvae begged towards
larger females. Larvae spent more time in close contact with larger
females over smaller ones, whilst there was no evidence that larvae begged
more when in close contact with larger females. Thus, larvae begged more
towards the larger female simply as a consequence of spending more time
close to larger females. Our findings have important implications for our
understanding of parent-offspring communication by showing that offspring
can choose between parents based on parental attributes, such as body
size, reflecting how much food parents are likely to provision.