Fig 1.
Monogamy and biparental care have evolved at least twice independently in the genus Peromyscus.
(A) Phylogenetic relationships of the four species under study, relative to other rodent models. Each line denotes one of 100 trees sampled from a pseudo-posterior distribution of birth-death node-dated completed trees from http://vertlife.org/phylosubsets/ [31]. (B) Representative pictures of breeding pairs of each study species. Left: promiscuous species, typically with the female inside the nest and the male outside. Right: monogamous species, typically with both parents inside the nest.
Fig 2.
Parental behaviors in four Peromyscus species and across four reproductive states.
(A) Schematic of behavioral assay showing the time and behaviors measured at each assay step. Male (blue) and female (red) trajectories as measured by (B) time spent huddling (seconds); (C) time spent licking pups (seconds); (D) fraction of pups retrieved to the nest; (E) nest quality score (from 0 to 4). Bars denote the median. st, main effect of reproductive state; s, main effect of sex; st × s, interaction between reproductive state and sex by linear mixed models (P < 0.05) see Materials and methods for details). Sample sizes (in pairs): white-footed mice, n = 9; deer mice, n = 8; oldfield mice, n = 8; California mice, n = 7.
Fig 3.
Infanticidal behaviors in four Peromyscus species and across four reproductive states.
Circles denote behavior of male (blue) and female (red) mice (filled: attacked the pup; empty: no attack). Pairs that did not produce a litter that survived to at least the third day were not tested as parents (denoted by crosses). The behavior of individual mice across reproductive states can be tracked horizontally. All experimental pairs are included as virgin, mated and expecting mice (n = 12 pairs for each species).