Insights into Parental Care from Studies on Non-mammalian Vertebrates

Parental care has attracted attention from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. While understanding the adaptive significance of care has been the focus of work in diverse organisms in behavioral ecology, most of what we know about the proximate mechanisms underlying parental care behavior comes from studies in mammals. Although studies on mammals have greatly improved our understanding of care, viewing parental care solely through a mammalian lens can limit our understanding. Here, we draw upon examples from non-mammalian vertebrate systems to show that in many ways mammals are the exception rather than the rule for caregiving: across vertebrates, maternal care is often not the ancestral or the most common mode of care and fathering is not derivative of mothering. Embracing the diversity of parental care can improve our understanding of both the proximate basis and adaptive significance of parental care and the affective processes involved in caregiving.