Extended maternal egg provisioning under high tadpole density (Amphibia: Rhacophoridae)

Abstract Parental care benefits offspring but comes with costs to parents; therefore, parents should adjust their care based on intrinsic and/or extrinsic conditions to optimize this trade‐off. Temporary aquatic habitats often experience resource limitations, and for amphibians inhabiting such environments, regulating parental care behavior is a crucial adaptive strategy. This study focuses on Kurixalus eiffingeri , a treefrog known for its parental care behavior. To examine whether female care depends on offspring density, we designed two treatments conducted in a laboratory: a low‐density treatment (LT) with six tadpoles and a high‐density treatment (HT) with 18 tadpoles. The results showed that tadpoles in the LT exhibited faster growth rates, whereas those in the HT grew more slowly and required a longer time to metamorphose (reaching Gosner stage 41). However, there was no significant difference in body mass at metamorphosis and metamorphic success between the two treatments. We also found that females increased the number of feeding events during the tadpole stage when facing a higher number of tadpoles. This extended provisioning may reflect maternal adjustment to tadpole density or, alternatively, offspring‐driven regulation through persistent begging. Our findings suggest that prolonged care under high tadpole density can arise via multiple pathways, highlighting the potential roles of both parental plasticity and offspring solicitation in shaping parental care strategies in resource‐limited aquatic environments.