Dynamic duos: learning to care as a pair in the biparental prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster)

Our results indicate that individual care behavior is adjusted based on the parenting effort of the dyadic partner. When only group-wise analyses are conducted, it appears that only mothers reduce care based on experience. However, through a dyadic-based analysis, we find that a larger difference in care between the two parents in the naive context corresponds to greater shifts in care by both parents in the experienced context. In sum, two patterns emerge in experienced parents that appear to improve parental care efficiency: (1) parents take on a more compensatory pattern of caregiving over time and (2) are able to adapt to initial differences in care such that investments in care become more balanced between mothers and fathers over time.