This episode explores the neuroscience of pair bonding and parental care across the animal kingdom, revealing surprisingly widespread and diverse strategies that offer insights into human relationships and parenting.
this is from our neurons to yours a
podcast from the WOAI neurosciences
Institute at Stanford University on this
show we crisscross scientific
disciplines to bring you to the
frontiers of brain science I'm your host Nicholas
Wier [Music]
here's the sound we created to introduce today's
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
episode perhaps that is the sound of
frog parent parenting today we're going
to talk about frogs and spiders as
parents bear with me for a minute what
today's show is really about is the idea
of pair bonding that's the scientific
term for the collaborative bonds that
form between two parents as well as the
bonds between parents and their
offspring we're obviously familiar with
the example of family Bonds in our own
species and you probably have ideas
about what families look like in animals
like wolves let's say or swans that made
for life but it turns out that if you
look across the animal kingdom strong
family bonds are way more widespread
than you might imagine frogs have them
spiders have them fish have them we
wanted to learn more about the
Neuroscience Behind These family bonds
across the animal kingdom and what this
could teach us about our own experience
as partners and as parents plus I just
wanted to talk about frogs this week
Stanford biologist Lauren oconnell and
her lab travel around the world studying
boys and frogs wolf spiders butterfly
fish and other animals that it turns out
are pretty amazing
parents I started the conversation by
asking Lauren to tell me why she studies
parab bonding in frogs her lab
specialty the main reason we study
amphibians is because they have a huge
diversity in behaviors so there are some
species that where only dads care for
Offspring there are some species where
only mons do this and there are some
species where they do teamwork to raise
their offspring there's some species
that you know they're like hey I'm I'm
going to lay these eggs then I'm out and
so what we can do then is we can use
this behavioral diversity to really dig
into the neuroscience and understand how
different neural circuits give rise to
different behaviors so you rais a good
point which is that you know this is a
neuroscience show and parenting Behavior
feels sort of like you that's something
that we learn about in biology classes
and ecology and so on so so what is the
big Neuroscience question that motivates
you when I was in graduate school I was
working on my own parental Care Project
I was you know pregnant and about to
have my first kid right
I and so I was very interested in
Parental care literature and I found
that we understand quite a lot about
maternal care from laboratory rodents
but we know very little about what
happens in the brains of fathers mostly
because laboratory rodents very rarely
display paternal care and so what I
wanted to do was I wanted to study what
are the sex differences or similarities
in how the brain produces a parental
care behavior and so to be able to do
that I wanted to really
disentangle paternal care and maternal
care and separate this from Pair bonding
because usually in mammals when you have
males caring for Offspring they also are
peir bonded to the mate and those two
neural pathways are really difficult to
disentangle that's really interesting so
maybe we can take a step back I mean
when did joint parent care evolve in the
history of life it's evolved
independently many times invertebrates
and invertebrates in each lineage
especially in invertebrates there has
been independent transitions to parental
care and what drives the evolution of
pair bonding and parental care can be
very different across Texa so in mammals
you know we have the definition of being
a mammal you know is like lactation
where moms are caring for Offspring when
you're live living in an environment
where resources are really few and far
between you get care bonding and
paternal care where it's actually
adventage just for the male to actually
stick around but in other animals where
you know lactation is not a requisite or
an ancestral feature there can be lots
of different ways and and reasons to
evolve pair bonding so I think that I've
always assumed that pair bonding is
there basically to keep the data around
but it sounds like that is a Maman
perspective to take yes yeah I think
that's very much a mammals perspective
so in other taxa there are other reasons
for couples to stick together for
example in butterfly fish the reason
that they form pair bonds is actually
resource defense or territorial defense
so they defend corals that are their
food resources and they actually just
spawn into the water column and so
there's no parental care at all but they
have these pair bonds most of them are
male female pair bonds but we also find
male male pair bonds and female female
pair bonds because when it's not tied to
offspring then you get a lot more
variation in who pair bonding with who
if it's based on defending a resource
and then in reptile for example the only
peir bonding reptile is these
shingleback skinks that we study in
Australia and it's thought that the
reason that they do pair bonding is
actually it interfaces with the immune
system because there are lots of
parasites around individuals that pair
bond and only reproduce with a specific
individual have less diseases than
individuals that are a little bit more
promiscuous oh interesting it's one of
these things that we take it very much
for granted as this is the way things
work in humans and therefore it must be
the way things work in other animals but
yeah it's interesting to hear that about
there being so many different strategies
well let's dive into some examples
because your lab studies some very
interesting organisms uh both in your
lab and out in the field around the
world really it's it's very impressive
looking through your website just to see
all the different animals the different
parts of the world where you're doing
this research let's start with the
poison frogs can you describe them for
us what do they like sure so poison
frogs have evolved several times this
like trait of being chemically defended
and very colorful so they're very
brightly colored my favorite frog is
blue with black spots um and so that's a
male unial care species we do most of
our work in Ecuador in Colombia and in
French Guana different species can be
wildly different colors and even within
the same species they can have very
different colorations each population
has their own little flavor of a pattern
and eration that they've evolved to
signal to their predators that they are
not a tasty snack and all of them
display parental care but that looks
different in different species so in
some species only dads care for
Offspring and in some species only
females do this and in others they're
biparental they're pair bonding they're
monogamous and they really have to work
together as a team to successfully rear
their TD holes just to give you an
example they lay their eggs in the leaf
litter they have to get their tadpoles
after they hatch from the leaf litter
you know on the ground to a pool of
water because tadpoles are still Aquatic
and so they carry them piggyback style
to a pool of water and then in species
where Ms are involved they actually come
back and feed the tadpoles for several
months until the tadpoles complete
metamorphosis and so it's this very
energy intensive parental care strategy
I was amazed to read about some of the
studies you've done sort of tracking
these little fr around the forest as you
mentioned they're laying their eggs and
then they've got to take their tpes from
one place to another and then they've
got to come back and feed them how do
you keep track of this Behavior so the
size of these frogs are very small
compared to what people would be
familiar with in a temperate region like
the United States the monogamous species
that we study is about like the size of
your thumbnail and we have two ways of
tracking them one we use these frog
pants we call them these like belts
where we put little trackers on them and
can track where they are moving
throughout the forest and this gives us
a sense of like where their home ranges
and where they're putting their tadpoles
they put their tadpoles in these very
specific plants and the you know to me
the forest looks all the same and like
how are they remembering where they're
putting their tadpole and then the other
thing that we do is we use these camera
traps both in the field and in the
laboratory that are motion activated and
we put these cameras above the nursery
sites where the Todd Pooles are living
and then we can record any parental
interactions that's so cool okay so what
are you learning about the brain
circuits behind parental care you said
you're interested in understanding the
differences between poison frogs where
the mom takes care of the babies where
the dad takes care of the babies and
where both take care of the babies so
what is that teaching us I initially
thought there would be different brain
regions and cell types that are
facilitating parental care in males and
females but by comparing all this
species we found that actually there's a
core circuit a core set of cells that
promote parental behavior in both sexes
so for example we have found that these
ginin neurons in the hypothalamus are
activated when they do parental care and
these same neurons are also activated
during parental care and mammals there's
this core circuit for Parental care and
it's the same when you look in a frog
and when you look in an anal and soble
yeah so potentially you know each time
you've evolved parental care the brain
is using the same toolkit and so now the
question we have is well what causes
this circuit to be activated in some
cases but not others and what are the
triggers that are turning on this
circuit and so that's where we're at now
that's so fascinating I was really also
interested in the work you did about
feeding the eggs I mean in mammals
parenting is closely tied to nursing you
mentioned that in some of these frog
species they also feed the babies their
own unfertilized eggs why do they do
that and and what did what did you find
about the brain circuits is it similar
to in mammals with nursing yeah so we're
very interested in how new behaviors of
all like how do you change brain
circuitry to invent a new behavior in
the case of mammals and ation and like
infants crying to their mom and things
like that these are very ancestral
features of mammals you know that all
mammals share and so we want to
understand like how does that arise like
how do you invent a new behavior that
requires moms and Offspring to
communicate with one another and so we
started studying the evolution of this
egg feeding behavior in that system moms
visit the tadpoles and then the tadpoles
have to communicate that they need food
and they do it with this dance display
called begging Behavior this has evolved
many times in frogs and so it also let
us look at when you evolve a new
Behavior do you always do it the same
way in this case we were comparing
poison DRS in South America and poison
DRS in
Madagascar and what we found is that the
behaviors were very similar and then the
brain regions that were promoting this
Behavior were the same but when we
started looking at different cell types
and signaling Pathways they were
actually very different between species
so for example the Madagascar frauds
seem to use the oxytocin system similar
to mammals to promote maternal care
whereas South American poison frogs
don't and so it suggests that there's
this alternative mechanistic solution to
promoting maternal care in the South
American species interesting so um the
last thing I want to ask about frogs and
I I do want to touch on a couple of
other of the animals you're studying
briefly is I was really interested to
see you've got um a new study that
you're working on showing that some of
the frogs that that do have pair bonds
that do have long-term bonds seem to
have empathy for one another could you
talk about that a little bit yeah so
what we were interested in is this idea
that the strength of a pair bond in some
way depends on your ability to empathize
with your partner the ability to see
when they're stressed the ability to
pick up a little bit of slack when
they're not feeling well and this
ability to kind of be flexible in the
amount of work that you're putting in
and kind of in tune to your partner's
you know State and so this has been
shown in mammals and birds but we also
wanted to test well you know these frogs
do monogamy they do pair bonding so it's
you know it's probable that they can
also do this Behavior what we did is we
ended up replicating a study in mammals
where they take one of the partners and
they stress them and then they unite
them and then they look to see what are
the behavioral and hormonal responses of
their partner and so what we found is
that in frogs and similar to mammals
whenever the partner is stressed the
focal animal will then mirror their
behavior and their hormone levels so if
their partner is stressed and they have
high cortisol levels they will also have
increased in cortisol levels even though
they were not exposed to a stressor and
we found that the partner's ability to
do that kind of predicts their their
bond strength and how good they are at
rearing Offspring oh that's fascinating
yeah it has real Fitness outcomes in
these frogs and I think that for a while
and I was guilty of this too when we
first started this project is because
you know we most of us have a very
mammal Centric view of empathy but you
know even Darwin hypothesized that
empathy was very widespread across the
animal kingdom and you know in a way
that he was right that even these frogs
are able to mirror their hormone and
their behavioral state to ensure their
offsprings survive and so I think it's
something that through natural selection
has occurred in many different taxa and
we just haven't looked very broadly to
find it it's so interesting to hear
about what we're learning from from
these frogs about the brain circuits of
pair bonding and the Brain circuits of
Parental care and how some of these
things are are shared the other species
I wanted to ask about are the wolf
spiders I think the only thing I know
about spider parenting probably comes
from Charlotte's Web and it's a sad
story so these wolf spiders are they are
they good parents yeah a wolf spiders
are amazing parents they do something
very similar to the poison frogs where
the moms will carry the egg saat for a
several weeks and then when the
spiderlings hat out of this egg saat she
will actually carry them around on her
back again for several weeks and during
this whole time she is not eating she's
only doing this parental care eventually
then the spiderlings will disperse once
they're big enough to kind of make it on
their own and then she then goes back to
eating and trying to like regain some of
these nutrients and all the energy lost
from this very intensive parental Care
Effort and so if you think about you
know the life of a spider caring for a
clutch for a month without eating is a
huge investment in their offspring and
so what we're interested in is like how
this Behavior that's very similar to
parental investment we see in vertebrate
tax how does this work in the brain and
so we're doing a lot of similar studies
where we're looking at what are the
brain region and what are the neural
cell types that promote parental care in
wolf spiders there's a lot of variation
across species on how long they care for
Offspring and and what that actually
looks like and I think it's a really
great comparative system yeah I never
knew that spiders could be such good
parents so that brings us
sort of back to where we started
thinking about what is the purpose of
Parental care what is the purpose of
pair bonding and hearing about all these
different species I'm struck that there
is no one answer even though there might
be common brain circuits that we
remarkably share with frogs or fish or
even spiders maybe we'll find out I
guess they've got very different brains
the reasons that that animals do parir
bonding are very different what are your
takeaways of what learning about our own
brains and how we do parental care and
does studying these animals give you a
different perspective about our own
experiences as parents or mates or
Partners yeah I I think it shows that
being a parent and being a partner is
one really hard and not something a lot
of organisms can do well and it takes a
lot of energy and it takes a lot of
empathy and really great communication
and I think this is what we've learned
in many of the species that we're
working with being empathetic and being
in tune with your partner or your child
like emotional state predicts like the
strength of that Bond and the ability
for kids or The Offspring to survive and
and to do really well those are the
parallels that I see between the animals
that we're studying and in my own life
that's beautiful yeah I mean the
struggle is real but we're not alone I
kind of like that right and it's
something that all different species are
investing in and making a priority well
this is so fascinating there are so many
more really interesting studies and
different animals and experiments going
on around the world that your lab is
doing I'd love to come back and talk
about this more so thank you so much for
coming on the show thank you so much for having
having
me thanks so much again to Our Guest
Lauren oconnell for more info about her
work check out the links in the show
notes this episode was produced by
Michael Osborne with production
assistance by Morgan huker Amy Garza
designed our artwork I'm Nicholas Wier
see you next [Music]
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