High rates of extra-pair paternity in a socially monogamous beetle with biparental care

Abstract

1. Nest construction and paternity assurance are predicted to favour biparental care in insects. The horned passalus (Odontotaenius disjunctus) is a socially monogamous beetle with biparental care that breeds in decaying logs. The genetic mating system of the horned passalus was investigated to determine if paternity assurance is likely to drive the evolution or maintenance of paternal care in this system. Parental time budgets were also examined to better understand the types and frequencies of behaviours performed by parents. 2. Genotyping-by-sequencing revealed high levels of extra-pair paternity, with 54.8% of offspring sired by extra-pair males and 70% of nests containing extra-pair young. 3. More heterozygous social males were cuckolded less than more homozygous social males. Extra-pair mating, however, seems unlikely to increase offspring genetic diversity as extra-pair offspring were not more heterozygous than within-pair offspring, and average brood heterozygosity did not increase with higher rates of extra-pair paternity. 4. Behavioural observations demonstrated that parents spent on average 46.5% of their time processing the decaying wood resource for larval offspring. Because resource processing is a by-product of feeding and provides shareable benefits for all larvae in the brood, this form of paternal care could be favoured despite low paternity.