High rates of extra‐pair paternity in a socially monogamous beetle with biparental care

Dillard, Jacqueline

doi:10.1111/een.12346

Cited by 22 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…To make sense of the evolutionary forces shaping social monogamy, the multiple phylogenetically independent origins of this mating system are a valuable resource. Although a focus on birds and mammals is understandable because social monogamy is widespread in these groups, the insights provided by other taxa should not be neglected (Brown, Morales, & Summers, 2010;Dillard, 2017;Liebgold, Cabe, Jaeger, & Leberg, 2006). For instance, although monogamous fishes represent a relatively small minority of all extant fish species, social monogamy occurs in at least 18 fish families (Whiteman & Côté, 2004;Kvarnemo, 2018;e.g., Barlow, 1991;Kvarnemo, Moore, Jones, Nelson, & Avise, 2000;Whiteman & Côté, 2003) and reports of monogamy in fishes have been increasing.…”

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Brood‐tending males in a biparental fish suffer high paternity losses but rarely cuckold

et al. 2018

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Extra‐pair paternity within socially monogamous mating systems is well studied in birds and mammals but rather neglected in other animal taxa. In fishes, social monogamy has evolved several times but few studies have investigated the extent to which pair‐bonded male fish lose fertilizations to cuckolders and gain extra‐pair fertilizations themselves. We address this gap and present genetic paternity data collected from a wild population of Variabilichromis moorii, a socially monogamous African cichlid with biparental care of offspring. We show that brood‐tending, pair‐bonded males suffer exceptionally high paternity losses, siring only 63% of the offspring produced by their female partners on average. The number of cuckolders per brood ranged up to nine and yet, surprisingly, brood‐tending males in the population were rarely the culprits. Brood‐tending males sired very few extra‐pair offspring, despite breeding in close proximity to one another. While unpaired males were largely responsible for the cuckoldry, pair‐bonded males still enjoyed higher fertilization success than individual unpaired males. We discuss these results in the context of ecological and phenotypic constraints on cuckoldry and the fitness payoffs of alternative male tactics. Our study provides new insights into how pair‐bonded males handle the trade‐off between securing within‐pair and extra‐pair reproduction.

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Brood‐tending males in a biparental fish suffer high paternity losses but rarely cuckold

et al. 2018

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“…Although average within‐family relatedness was relatively low at 0.21 ± SD 0.19, this should be expected for two reasons. First, extra‐pair paternity is high in this species with 54.8% of offspring sired by extra‐pair males and 70% of nests containing extra‐pair young, reducing within‐family relatedness by lowering relatedness between social fathers and their offspring and relatedness between siblings (Dillard, ). Second, relatedness as it is reported here is a statistical measure that is dependent on the average population relatedness; in other words, if all individuals in the population share many alleles with one another, relatedness even between close relatives might be lower than expected (e.g.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…They excavate extensive tunnel systems (galleries) in these logs where they feed on rotting wood and frass – a combination of chewed wood and faeces (Schuster & Schuster, ). Most passalid species studied to date appear to be socially monogamous, and both the male and female parent cooperate in caring for their young by constructing and defending tunnels, processing the decaying wood for larvae and building pupal cells for offspring (Schuster & Schuster, ; Dillard, ). During the first few weeks following pupal emergence, young adults, also known as tenerals at this stage, are callow, poorly sclerotized and easily damaged (Fig.…”

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“…Passalids rely on a community of microbial symbionts that act as an external rumen to process wood in their tunnels, making their nesting environment highly susceptible to pathogenic fungal growth. Behavioural observations of parental activity suggest that the majority of parents' time is spent processing the wood and frass resource (Dillard, ). This behaviour could function to enrich the resource with symbionts or nutrients, but it might also function to inhibit bacterial or fungal growth.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Delayed dispersal and prolonged brood care in a family‐living beetle

Dillard

Maigret

2017

J of Evolutionary Biology

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Delayed juvenile dispersal is an important prerequisite for the evolution of family-based social systems, such as cooperative breeding and eusociality. In general, young adults forego dispersal if there are substantial benefits to remaining in the natal nest and/or the likelihood of dispersing and breeding successfully is low. We investigate some general factors thought to drive delayed juvenile dispersal in the horned passalus beetle, a family-living beetle in which young adults remain with their families in their natal nest for several months before dispersing. Fine-scale population genetic structure indicated high gene flow between nest sites, suggesting that constraints on mobility are unlikely to explain philopatry. Young adults do not breed in their natal log and likely disperse before reaching breeding age, suggesting that they do not gain direct reproductive benefits from delayed dispersal. We also examined several ways in which parents might incentivize delayed dispersal by providing prolonged care to adult offspring. Although adult beetles inhibit fungal growth in the colony by manipulating both the nest site and deceased conspecifics, this is unlikely to be a major explanation for family living as both parents and adult offspring seem capable of controlling fungal growth. Adult offspring that stayed with their family groups also neither gained more mass nor experienced faster exoskeleton development than those experimentally removed from their families. The results of these experiments suggest that our current understanding of the factors underlying prolonged family living may be insufficient to explain delayed dispersal in at least some taxa, particularly insects.

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“…Currently, we lack information on paternity in many of these species. However, a recent study found high levels of extrapair paternity in a passalid beetle with biparental care (Dillard, 2017). Thus, there is a need for further work on the levels of extrapair paternity and male responses to lost paternity in arthropods with biparental care or uniparental care.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caring males do not respond to cues about losses in paternity in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides

2017

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High rates of extra‐pair paternity in a socially monogamous beetle with biparental care

Abstract: This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as

Cited by 22 publications

References 65 publications

Brood‐tending males in a biparental fish suffer high paternity losses but rarely cuckold

Brood‐tending males in a biparental fish suffer high paternity losses but rarely cuckold

Delayed dispersal and prolonged brood care in a family‐living beetle

Caring males do not respond to cues about losses in paternity in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides

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