Behavior is a response to an environment, but the capacity to show a particular behavioral response depends on an interaction between genes, development, and ecology. The strength of selection depends on how frequently a behavioral trait is expressed. Thus, understanding the ecological contexts that induce variation in parental care is critical for understanding adaptive evolution, yet the ecology of parental care is poorly understood. 

While all burying beetles show superficially similar parenting, the form and regulation of care differs both within and across species. For example, larvae cannot survive without care in some species (obligate care), while in others, care is not required (facultative). Sometimes the care parents provide depends on environmental conditions; at others, the expression of care is invariant to context. Parental care strategies range from uniparental to biparental to communal breeding. This variation in care strategies provides a unique opportunity to determine the relationship between parental care and ecology. 

Selected publications:

​Potticary, A.L., M.C. Belk, J.C. Creighton, M. Ito, R. Kilner, J. Komdeur, N.J. Royle, D.R. Rubenstein, M. Schrader, S. Shen, D.S. Sikes, P.T. Smiseth, R. Smith, S. Steiger, S.T. Trumbo, and Moore, A.J. (2024). Revisiting the ecology and evolution of burying beetle behavior (Staphylinidae: Silphinae). Ecology and Evolution 14: e70175.  https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70175

Potticary, A.L., H.W. Otto, J. V. McHugh, and Moore, A.J. (2023) Spatiotemporal variation in the competitive environment, with implication for how climate change may affect a species with parental care. Ecology and Evolution 13: e09972.   https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9972

Potticary, A.L. and R.A. Duckworth. 2020. Multiple environmental stressors induce an adaptive maternal effect. The American Naturalist 196: 487-500. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/710210 

A broad question of evolutionary biology is how new traits evolve. Development is often considered to be internal to the organism, with the environment acting primarily as an external source of selection that sifts between alternative developmental pathways. Yet, internal and external factors define and specify each other during development to produce phenotypic outcomes, and this is true for behavior as well. 

Behaviors like parental care often create the developmental environment for offspring, with major implications for behavior and physiology of offspring in later life and potentially fitness. A major goal of my work is to illuminate how parental care influences behavioral development of offspring in burying beetles. In my future work, I will investigate whether the patterns within species are recapitulated across species, with a specific focus on how behavior influences evolution.  

Selected publications:

Potticary, A.L., C.B. Cunningham, and Moore, A.J. (2024). Offspring compensate for poor parenting by being better parents. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 37: 100-109. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voad005.

​Potticary, A.L. and R.A. Duckworth. 2021. A neuroendocrine perspective on the origin and evolution of cooperative breeding. Ornithology 138: 1-17. ​https://doi.org/10.1093/ornithology/ukab036

​Potticary, A.L., E.M. Morrison, and Badyaev A.V. 2020. Turning induced plasticity into refined adaptations during range expansion. Nature Communications 11: 3254. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16938-7

​Badyaev, A.V., A.L. Potticary, E.S. Morrison. 2017. Most colorful example of genetic assimilation? Exploring the evolutionary destiny of recurrent phenotypic accommodation. The American Naturalist 190: 266-280. doi.org/10.1086/692327