Cost of parental care in the woodroach Cryptocercus punctulatus Scudder (Dictyoptera: Cryptocercidae)

Summary The objective of this study was to measure the effect of parental care on the reproductive capabilities and survival of adult Cryptocercus punctulatus Scudder. Brood removal studies show that the long term parental care exhibited by this woodroach can exact a cost in terms of future reproduction by delaying a second reproductive episode. If C. punctulatus is used as a model of the ancestral state of the termites, changes in responsibility for care giving behavior can account for all the higher components of eusociality (overlap of worker generations, brood care by workers, non-reproductive castes) by shifting the cost of parental care from the adults to the oldest offspring.