1. Burying beetles (
2. One little‐studied species,
3. We find that development is not only extremely slow in this species, but it is also delayed even in comparison to other burying beetles reared at similar temperatures. However, the presence of parents reduces the time that offspring take to leave the carcass. This decrease in development time does not appear to result in a trade‐off with mortality or body size.
4. From these results, we suggest that very slow development may be advantageous when living in a particularly cold environment. Additionally, one role of extended parental care may be to assist offspring in dealing with these harsh conditions, and to mitigate the potentially negative consequences of adopting such a slow life‐history strategy.