Ethology. 2018;1–10. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/eth | 1 © 2018 Blackwell Verlag GmbH 1 | INTRODUCTION Consistent behavioral differences between individuals, also known as personalities, have been identified in animal species from inverte- brates to primates (review in Carere & Maestripieri, 2013). Research in this field encompasses description of traits and correlations among them (e.g., Cain, Rich, Ainsworth, & Ketterson, 2011; Dingemanse, Both, Drent, van Oers, & van Noordwijk, 2002), the search for proximate mechanisms restraining trait plasticity (e.g., Baugh et al., 2017), and for adaptive explanations to solve the puzzle of why consistency of behavior exists (Wolf & Weissing, 2010). Currently, great focus is given to five classes of personality traits proposed by Received: 31 January 2018 | Revised: 14 March 2018 | Accepted: 23 May 2018 DOI: 10.1111/eth.12770 RESEARCH PAPER Parenting styles in white-rumped swallows (Tachycineta leucorrhoa) show a trade-off between nest defense and chick feeding Uschi Wischhoff 1 | Fernando Marques-Santos 1 | Lilian T. Manica 2 | James J. Roper 3 | Marcos Rodrigues 4 1 Pós-graduação em Ecologia, Conservação e Manejo de Vida Silvestre, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil 2 Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil 3 Pós-graduação em Ecologia e Conservação, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil 4 Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Correspondence Uschi Wischhoff, Pós-graduação em Ecologia, Conservação e Manejo de Vida Silvestre, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Email: uschiw@gmail.com Funding information Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico Abstract Studies about personalities in wild animals usually focus on five categories of behav- ioral traits that do not easily accommodate all aspects of parental care, a class of behaviors with direct consequence to reproductive success. Parental care can vary consistently between individuals and constitute parenting styles. Here we investi- gate the consistency of four behaviors of parental care across two breeding seasons of white-rumped swallows Tachycineta leucorrhoa in southern Brazil. These behaviors are a prospection of potential nest-sites, nest defense against predators or conspe- cifics, and chick feeding. If these first three behaviors are consistent, they can be classified according to the standard categories of personality as exploration, bold- ness, and aggressiveness, respectively. We find that all behaviors, except explora- tion, are consistent between individuals in the long term. We also show that, besides individual identity, couple identity is an important component explaining variation in behavior. This pattern can arise if behavior influences pair formation or if behavior is a consequence of a common environment affecting the couple. We show that, de- pending on the parental task, males or females are more consistent, suggesting that sexes are adopting different strategies of parental care allocation. We then investi- gate if there is a trade-off between nest defense and chick feeding. We find that birds that defend more also feed the brood less often and suggest that testosterone might be the mechanism modulating this trade-off. Lastly, we discuss the implications of our results to mate choice and highlight the need for studies linking parenting styles to fitness in swallow species. KEYWORDS animal personality, behavioral syndrome, feeding rate, parental provisioning, repeatability, time-budget Editor: L. Ebensperger