Heat stress effects on offspring compound across parental care.

Abstract

Heatwaves associated with climate change threaten biodiversity by disrupting behaviours like parental care. While parental care may buffer populations from adverse environments, studies show mixed results, possibly due to heat stress affecting different care components. We investigated how heat stress impacts parental care and offspring performance in the burying beetle Nicrophorus nepalensis under control (17.8°C) and heat stress (21.8°C) conditions. We focused on two critical periods: pre-hatching care (carcass preparation) and post-hatching care (offspring provisioning). To disentangle the vulnerability of these parental care components to heat stress, we reciprocally transferred carcasses prepared under control or heat stress to females breeding under both conditions. Heatwaves affecting only one care period did not alter reproduction, but when both pre- and post-hatching periods experienced heatwaves, reproductive success declined. Females exhibited higher energy expenditure during provisioning, evidenced by greater body mass loss. Notably, heat stress had long-lasting effects on offspring via carcass preparation, resulting in smaller adult size and higher mortality. These results highlight the complexity of environmental stressors on parental care, suggesting that different care components may respond differently to heat stress, and thus need to be examined separately to better understand how parental care responds to, and buffers against, temperature stress.