Microsatellite-based parentage analysis dataset for a burying beetle under biparental and uniparental care.

Biparental care of offspring is present but rare across the animal kingdom, and has postulated beneficial strategy as an increase in the number of offspring that can be raised. However, paternity assurance is generally doubtful compared to maternity; polyandrous broods, high rate of extra-pair matings, and sperm competition lead to less certain paternity, and this uncertainty of paternity would incline to male desertion from biparental care. Therefore, high paternity assurance should favor the evolution of paternal care of offspring. In biparental care in insects, nesting is a common behavior and the nest structures can limit extra-pair copulations. Paternity was estimated using two methods, pedigree method and pairwise method. We compared paternity between the broods of uniparental (female) and biparental care in a semi-natural setting using co-dominant markers, microsatellite DNA markers, in the burying beetle Nicrophorus quadripunctatus (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Silphini). Parentage analysis using pedigree method showed that paternity of the putative major males (i.e., the proportion of larvae sired from the first dominant father per brood) was significant higher in biparental care broods than in uniparental care broods. However, 78.6% of biparental broods had mismatch genotypes between the putative major males and resident males (sampled males) by unknown reasons. On the other hand, pairwise method showed that paternity of resident males (sampled males) was significantly higher in biparental broods than in uniparental broods. High paternity could account for the evolution and maintenance of male care in biparental breeding systems.