An experimental test for age-related improvements in reproductive performance in a frog that cares for its young

Reproductive performance often increases with age in long-lived iteroparous organisms, a pattern that can result from within-individual increases in effort and/or competence. In free-living populations, it is typically difficult to distinguish these mechanisms or to isolate particular features of reproduction-influencing outcomes. In captive Oophaga pumilio, a frog in which mothers provide extended offspring provisioning via trophic eggs, we experimentally manipulated the age at which females started breeding and then monitored them across repeated reproductive events. This experiment allowed us to decouple age and experience and isolate maternal care as the proximate source of any differences in performance. Younger first-time mothers produced larger broods than older first-time mothers, but did not rear more offspring to independence. Across repeated reproductive events, maternal age was unassociated with any metric of performance. At later reproductive events, however, mothers produced fewer metamorphs, and a lower proportion of individuals in their broods reached independence. These patterns suggest that performance does not improve with age or breeding experience in this frog, and that eventual declines in performance are driven by reproductive activity, not age per se. Broadly, age-specific patterns of reproductive performance may depend on the proximate mechanism by which parents influence offspring fitness and how sensitive these are to effort and competence.