Impact of TYLCV infection on host selection and feeding behavior of MED Bemisia tabaci on pepper plants.

Sexual conflict is a fundamental and long‐standing topic in behavioral ecology, which refers to an antagonistic selection process acting on two sexes with different interests (reviewed by Arnqvist & Rowe, ). This conflict arises when males and females face unmatched or opposing selection on costly reproductive traits and behaviors (e.g. parental care behavior), causing divergent optimal fitness benefits for each sex (Parker, ; Arnqvist & Rowe, ; Bonduriansky , ; Lessells, ; Taborsky , ; Paquet & Smiseth, ). “Anisogamy” theory has been proposed to explain the different sex roles and their consequent effects on mating and parental care, suggesting that the asymmetry between sexes may emerge from gametes, which may extend to parental care at the pre‐ and postnatal stages of offspring (Trivers, ). Sexual conflict over parental care can be considered as a tug‐of‐war interaction between sexes, where both parents share benefits from their combined parental care to their young, whereas the costs of care are paid by each parent due to its own care to raise the young. Consequently, it could be expected that each parent is under selection to minimize its individual care by grafting more parental workload over to its partner (Arnqvist & Rowe, ; Houston , ; Székely , ; Paquet & Smiseth, ). Understanding how sexual conflict is resolved is critical, as it eventually shapes the emergence and stability of biparental care as an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (Houston , ; Harrison , ; reviewed by Paquet & Smiseth, ). Theoretical studies have proposed three potential types of behavioral interactions between male and female parents that may explain the resolution of sexual conflict over parental care (Johnstone & Hinde, ; Lessells, ; Paquet & Smiseth, ), including negotiation, matching, and sealed‐bid responses. Negotiation models assume that each parent directly adjusts its level of care in response to its partner's care, and that the focal parent may partially compensate for decreased care by its partner (McNamara , ). However, matching models highlight that each parent adjusts its level of care to match any increase or reduction in the partner's contribution (Johnstone & Hinde, ). Sealed‐bid models assume that the parental contribution of each individual is fixed and not influenced by its partner (Houston & Davies, ). Empirical works across animal species (almost all in avian species) provide evidence for all three models, where the two parents do not always deploy similar behavioral strategies to respond to the workload of their partners (Schwagmeyer , ; Johnstone & Hinde, ; Harrison , ). For example, females of Great Tits fully compensate for their partner's decrease in feeding rates, whereas males do not show any compensation and even tend to decrease their feeding rates (Sanz , ). However, the extent to which such behavioral strategies are influenced by ecological and social factors remains less explored (Wong & Candolin, ; Des Roches , ). Across and within species, evolutionary variation in magnitude and forms of parental care is driven by sex‐specific costs and benefits, which is also the result of changes in ecological and social environments experienced by males, females, or both sexes (e.g. van Dijk , ; Zheng , ; Ma , ; Long , ). Normally, individuals adjust their decisions in parental care according to the variation of internal factors (e.g. body condition, age, and the level of hormones; Achorn & Rosenthal, ) and external factors (e.g. ecological and social environments; Ma , ). For example, parents with good body conditions are likely to invest more time and energy in offspring care, maximizing reproductive advantages, compared with those with poor body conditions (Achorn & Rosenthal, ). This is because poor body conditions may lead to constrained resources available for self‐maintenance and future breeding opportunities (Soulsbury, ; Pontzer & McGrosky, ). As an example of external factors, resource availability, such as food abundance and territory quality, can affect individual parental care and reproduction. Individuals that breed in a high‐quality territory may forage more efficiently, gain more food resources for breeding, and may increase their parental care, compared with those who breed in a lower‐quality territory (Gauthier & de Jong, ). As another external factor, the pressure of competition with intraspecific and interspecific individuals is also found to directly influence reproductive success, which also alters an individual's parental care and reproduction (e.g. Requena , ; Grayson , ; Chan , ; Ratz , ).