PARENT-OFFSPRING

CONFLICT AND PARENTAL

INVESTMENT- ROBERT
TRIVERS
SHEENA MARIE A. ALBASON
MARY JOY G. ABIERA
 Parental Investment Theory
 One Explanation of mate selection and human reproductive
behaviour is ‘Parental Investment Theory’.
 Robert Ludlow "Bob" Trivers, born February 19, 1943, is an
American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. Trivers
proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental
investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination
(1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974).
Parental Investment (PI)

◦ “Any investment by the parent in an individual offspring

that increases the offspring’s chance of survivng at the
cost of the parent’s ability to invest in other offspring”
Parental Investment

◦ Includes provision of resources:

◦ Food
◦ Energy
◦ Territory

◦ Time spent teaching offspring

◦ Risks taken to protect young

Parental Investment

◦ Trivers believes that the differences between male and

female reproductive behaviour is as a result of
differences in parental investment made by males and
females
Males…

◦ Limitless sperm

◦ Fertile throughout life

determined by number of
◦ Number of potential offspring
potential female partners
◦ Required level of parental investment = Low
 Females…
◦
Egg is more than 100x larger than sperm
◦ Only release 1 (usually) a month
◦ Fertility lasts for around 30 years
◦ Average 40 weeks pregnancy
◦ Nutrients for fetus comes from mother’s own supplies
◦ Painful birth with potential complications
◦ Breastfeeding (in the past this would have lasted 2 yrs)

◦ Required level of Parental Investment = Very High

 Rates of abortion by single and married
women of different ages in England and
Best chance of 'O
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Reproductive »
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◦ Men = many female -o

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partners to increase a
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inclusive fitness & women
~. 10
◦ Women = ensure survival s
.
of few precious offspring .. 16-19 25-29 35..39 45-49
20-24 30-34 40-44
c Age of pregnant women
 Brain Size

◦ At birth, the human brain is only 27% of it’s adult size.

◦ (Macaque monkeys are born with 70% brain development)

◦ The adult human brain is 4 times larger than would be

expected in a primate with our size body
 Brain Size

◦ A human baby’s brain is very large at birth compared to the

size of the body

◦ Human females have evolved to have wider hips and pelvis to

cope with this extra pressure

◦ Childbirth has become more painful for a female as a result

 Brain Growth in Mao & Chimpanzee
.-..1400
~ 1200 l
~ 1000
0
al800 -Man
~ 600 - Chimpanzee
. 400

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rll

s
= Birth 5 10 1 2
5
 Brain Size

◦ As a result of our larger brains, humans must be born at this lower

level of brain development
◦ This results in babies having restricted motor capabilities when
they are born
◦ It takes humans twice as long as a chimpanzee to develop the
ability to walk and hold on to it’s mother

◦ It takes a long time for a child to reach a state where it could

survive without it’s parents
◦
Trivers (1972) defined parental investment as “Any investment by the parent in an individual

offspring that increases the offspring’s chance of surviving”

◦
The female investment is greater as eggs are less numerous and more costly than sperm. A

female is limited in the number of offspring she can produce whereas a male can have a virtually
◦
unlimited number of offspring.

◦ Human mothers make a greater pre-natal contribution through the demands of pregnancy and
◦ carrying and nourishing a child for 40 weeks.
Women also make a greater post-natal contribution through breastfeeding and care.

An increase in brain size has made childbirth more difficult, human babies are born prematurely
◦
and so need extra care and are more dependent on their mothers than other species, resulting in

◦ greater maternal investment.

Alternatively, the required parental investment from males is much lower and the best way for a

male to increase his inclusive fitness is to have many fertile, female partners

These factors explain why women select quality over quantity in potential partners and prioritise
Parent- Offspring
Conflict
 Parent – Offspring Conflict
So far we’ve looked at the idea of parental investment as
if the offspring were completely passive in the process.
But this is not the case. The resource allocations that
would maximize parental fitness are not necessarily
identical
This to those
tug-of-war that would
between what amaximize offspring
parent is willing fitness.
to give and
what an offspring wants is termed parent-offspring conflict.
Why does this tug-of-war exist?
Well, we need to understand about diploid, sexually
reproducing critters. 
In diploid (sexually reproducing) organisms, the parents
have a 50% relation to each of their offspring. On the
other hand, the offspring is 100% related to itself, 50%
related to its full-siblings, and 25% related to its half-
siblings. This difference in relations creates a conflict.
 Weaning Conflict
An example of parent-offspring conflict is the weaning
conflict, which exists in mammals where the mother wants
to stops nursing but her offspring wants to continue. The
sooner the mother weans her baby, the sooner she can
reproduce again, thus having more offspring.

For example, in baboons, the weaning process can last months while the mom
bites, pushes and hits her offspring in order to keep it away, while the baby
cries and screams. So, while the mother rejects it, the baby has all sorts of
tactics to try to get the mother to continue nursing. This arguing leads to a
lengthy weaning process.
Trivers 1974 argues that this results in the
following predictions:
Parents and their children will be in conflict about when the
child should be weaned, with the parents generally wanting to
wean the child sooner to free themselves of this time-
consuming and costly activity and the child wanting to receive
milk for longer in order to ensure healthy growth. Parents
encourage children to value siblings more than they are
naturally inclined to as friendly siblings will share resources,
ensuring that all grow healthily with a better chance that the
parent’s genes are perpetuated, and freeing the parents to
invest in younger and therefore more needy siblings . But in
reality siblings are competing for resources.
 ◦ food supply to the fetus.
◦
Pre-natal conflict When a fetus perceives that it needs
more nutrition, it releases a hormone

◦ into the mother’s bloodstream that

This raises
causes the mother’s
her arteries blood
to constrict.
pressure and therefore delivers more

◦ blood (and hence nutrition) to the

this
fetuscan damage the mother’s tissues
and in severe cases can cause
◦
maternal death.
Clearly the adaptation has evolved to
benefit the fetus, even at the expense
Parent – Offspring Conflict

Conflict Before Birth – Some pregnant women suffer

from a potentially fatal condition – Preeclampsia, which
is a dangerous rise in the mother’s blood pressure
caused by the fetus secreting hormones in an effort to
get more nutrition. It serves the fetus well as it does get
more nutrients and is an adaptive mechanism which
benefits the fetus at the expense of the mother.
Conflict Before Birth

Research has shown that mothers who do have

high blood pressure during pregnancy tend to
have fewer spontaneous abortions and larger
babies at birth. So this suggests that high blood
pressure is associated with more healthy fetuses
and so is an adaptive strategy for the child. A risky
one though, as pre-eclampsia can kill pregnant
woman therefore putting the fetus at risk.
Temper Tantrums

As babies get older and the mom begins rejecting the baby,
it begins throwing tantrums- screaming and yelling, flailing
arms, pulling hair etc. This is not specific just to humans, but
happens a lot in many primates such as chimps, and
otangutans, especially at the height of weaning.
Parent – Offspring Conflict
Conflict After Birth – When their offspring are young and
helpless it is in the interests of the parents to invest more of
their resources in these offspring and less in their older,
stronger brothers and sisters. When these babies become older
and stronger, parents can maximise their own reproductive
fitness by directing their limited resources towards the younger
offspring and away from the older child. Parent-offspring
conflict is often most intense at this transfer stage, as the older
children attempt to prolong the parents’ primary focus on them
for as long as possible.
 Sibling Rivalry

• Offspring will want more than their “fair share” at the expense of
their siblings in order to maximise their own fitness.

• As a result sibling rivalries develop as children compete for the

attention and resources of parents.
 Commentary - Sibling Rivalry
Lalumière et al 1996 suggest that a powerful parental
strategy to cope with sibling rivalry is to steer siblings
along different paths, maximizing each individual’s
strengths, so that there is less sibling competition and
also less subsequent competition for the same mates.
An Evolutionary Perspective
According to the PI theory, parents maximise their
reproductive fitness by gradually withdrawing their
investment from older children in favour of younger
siblings. First and last-born siblings hold a privileged
status with respect to parental investment. First-borns
are closer to reproductive age, when their (and the
parents’ genes) will be perpetuated. Last-borns need
more caring for as they compete for resources amongst the
older, stronger siblings.
This hypothesis is supported by Andrews 2006

Analysed responses from a survey of 1600 US

adolescents. Results showed that severe suicide
attempts were significantly more common among
middle-born compared to first and last-born children.
This study supports the view that that suicidal behaviour
may be an adaptive response in line with the predictions
of the PI theory and that middle-borns would make risky
suicide attempts in an effort to extort increased
investment from parents.
CONCLUSION:

In parent–offspring conflict (POC), Trivers (1974) argued

that offspring are selected to demand more investment
than parents are selected to give. In his view, the ensuing
behavioral conflict over PI is caused by a genetic conflict of
interests because whereas parents are equally related to
all of their offspring and selected to balance investment
among their current and future offspring, the offspring are
only half related to their siblings and therefore are
selected to demand investment from their parents even at
their siblings’ expense.
CONCLUSION:

Parent–offspring behavioral conflict is widespread, intense, and

often prolonged in many primate species. Although POC theory is
not unequivocally supported by all primate research, it is premature
to conclude that mother–offspring behavioral conflict does not
reflect an underlying evolutionary conflict of interest over parental
investment. Trivers’ (1974) theory has enhanced our understanding
of the dynamics of parent–offspring relationships in many animal
species, and it is very likely that future studies of POC in primates
will continue to benefit from using the theory as an explanatory
framework.