Parental care and sexual selection

The function of parental care is said to be improved survival and development of embryos. Hence, parental care is traditionally viewed as a prime example of the action of natural selection. At the same time, parental care can be costly as it puts extensive constraints on the parents’ abilities to invest in themselves and sometimes in additional mating. This suggests that parental care has a fundamental adaptive value that results in selection for increased investment in the current reproductive effort at the expense of future reproductive success.