Data from: Hierarchical decision-making balances current and future reproductive success

Parental decisions in animals are often context-dependent and shaped by fitness trade-offs between parents and offspring. For example, the selection of breeding habitats can considerably impact the fitness of both offspring and parents, and therefore parents should carefully weigh the costs and benefits of available options for their current and future reproductive success. Here we show that resource-use preferences are shaped by a trade-off between parental effort and offspring safety in a tadpole-transporting frog. In a large-scale in-situ experiment, we investigated decision-strategies across an entire population of poison frogs that distribute their tadpoles across multiple water bodies. Pool use followed a dynamic and sequential selection process and transportation became more efficient over time. Our results point to a complex suite of environmental variables that are considered during offspring deposition, which necessitates a highly dynamic and flexible decision-making process in tadpole-transporting frogs.

动物的亲代决策通常具有情境依赖性，且由亲代与子代间的适合度（fitness）权衡所塑造。例如，繁殖栖息地的选择会显著影响子代与亲代的适合度，因此亲代需审慎权衡各类可选栖息地的成本与收益，以保障当下及未来的繁殖成功率。本研究以一种运输蝌蚪的箭毒蛙为对象，结果表明其资源利用偏好由亲代投入（parental effort）与子代安全之间的权衡所决定。我们通过大规模原位实验（in-situ experiment），对该箭毒蛙种群的决策策略展开研究——该种群会将蝌蚪分散安置于多个水体中。其对小型积水池的利用遵循动态连续的选择过程，且蝌蚪运输效率随时间推移逐步提升。本研究结果显示，亲代在安置蝌蚪时会考量一系列复杂的环境变量，这要求运输蝌蚪的箭毒蛙具备高度动态且灵活的决策过程。