Maternal condition and previous reproduction interact to affect offspring sex in a wild mammal

Douhard, Mathieu; Festa‐Bianchet, Marco; Pelletier, Fanie

doi:10.1098/rsbl.2016.0510

Cited by 18 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…• High-quality males produce more sons, whereas low-quality males produce more daughters [81]. These new results suggest that support for the TWH may be weaker than generally expected because the causal mechanism linking maternal condition and sex ratio can have nothing to do with what was originally proposed.…”

Section: Reversal Of Trivers-willard Effectmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Thus, the positive relationship between behavioral condition and offspring sex ratio observed early in this population [59] is consistent with both the Trivers-Willard and the cost of reproduction hypotheses. Recent studies of black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) [72] and bighorn sheep [81] took up the challenge to disentangle these hypotheses. In kittiwakes, sex-specific energetic costs of offspring best explain offspring sex ratio bias [72].…”

Section: Douhardmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Offspring sex ratio in mammals and the Trivers‐Willard hypothesis: In pursuit of unambiguous evidence

Douhard

2017

BioEssays

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Can mammalian mothers adaptively control the sex of their offspring? The influential Trivers-Willard hypothesis (TWH) proposes that when maternal condition increases the fitness of sons more than that of daughters, the proportion of sons produced should increase with maternal condition. Studies of mammals, however, often fail to support this hypothesis. This article highlights recent advances, including studies on the assumptions of the TWH and physiological mechanisms for sex-ratio manipulation. Particular emphasis is placed on how factors such as paternal quality, maternal reproductive costs and environmental conditions experienced by mothers early in life can mask/alter the expected relationship between maternal condition and offspring sex ratio or lead to apparent support for the TWH. While there is growing evidence that sex ratio around conception may be maternally and paternally manipulated, a challenge for future studies on sex allocation is to integrate how multiple and potentially opposite selective pressures affect offspring sex ratio.

show abstract

Section: Reversal Of Trivers-willard Effectmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Douhardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Offspring sex ratio in mammals and the Trivers‐Willard hypothesis: In pursuit of unambiguous evidence

Douhard

2017

BioEssays

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Bighorn ewes avoid producing sons in consecutive years unless they are in good condition (Douhard, Festa‐Bianchet, & Pelletier, ). In addition, under favourable environmental conditions, senescent ewes produce more daughters, while when conditions are poor they produce more sons but skip more reproductive opportunities (Martin & Festa‐Bianchet, ).…”

Section: Sons Are Costlier But Adaptive Sex Ratio Manipulation Is Rarementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These results suggest that the costs of reproduction for females may be affected by characteristics of their mate (Sheldon, ), with important implications also for the study of mate choice. In particular, if maternal and paternal interests diverge, there is a potential for intersexual conflict (Douhard, Festa‐Bianchet, Coltman, et al, ; Douhard, Festa‐Bianchet, & Pelletier, ) with unknown consequences for the fitness costs of reproduction in females.…”

Section: Next Stepsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long‐term studies of bighorn sheep and mountain goats reveal fitness costs of reproduction

Festa‐Bianchet

Côté

Hamel

et al. 2019

Journal of Animal Ecology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fitness costs of reproduction are expected when resources are limited. Costs drive the evolution of life‐history strategies and can affect population dynamics if females change their allocation of resources to reproduction. We studied fitness costs of reproduction in mountain ungulates in Alberta, Canada. We monitored two populations of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) for 44 and 30 years, and one of mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) for 30 years. Both species are highly iteroparous. Heterogeneity in individual reproductive potential makes fitness costs of reproduction difficult to detect and quantify without manipulations. In capital breeders, individual differences can be partly accounted for by considering body mass and other correlates of reproductive potential. Long‐term monitoring can reveal costs that only manifest under stressful conditions such as disease or resource scarcity. Despite individual differences in reproductive potential, we detected fitness costs of reproduction in females. Costs, in terms of mass gain and survival, are almost entirely born by subsequent offspring, as mothers prioritize their own maintenance and survival. Costs are greater for primiparous females, decrease with increasing body mass and increase as resource availability declines, and sons are costlier than daughters. Costs may increase for senescent females that appear to reduce allocation to reproduction. In bighorn sheep, costs mostly involve reduced mass gain and lower survival of subsequent offspring. In mountain goats, costs include reductions in mass gain, subsequent fecundity and juvenile survival. In males, fitness costs derive mostly from attempts to reproduce rather than from siring success and likely depend upon individual competitiveness. In the absence of selective harvests, dominant males may enjoy high fitness and possibly lower costs compared to subordinates. The conservative reproductive tactic of mountain ungulate females likely explains why density dependence mostly involves later primiparity and lower recruitment, but rarely affects adult survival. Future research will seek to better account for heterogeneity in reproductive potential, assess cumulative reproductive costs and investigate the potential effects of fathers on maternal allocation tactics.

show abstract

“…The ability to identify the parents of individuals in wild populations can provide insight into a wide range of topics including inbreeding levels (Dunn, Clancey, Waits, & Byers, 2011;Pemberton, 2004), translocation success (Hogg, Forbes, Steele, & Luikart, 2006;Marker et al, 2008), hybridization (Adams, Kelly, & Waits, 2003;Steyer et al, 2016), demographic processes (D'Aloia et al, 2015;Douhard, Festa-Bianchet, & Pelletier, 2016), mating system (Dugdale, Macdonald, Pope, & Burke, 2007;Hogg & Forbes, 1997;Jones, Kvarnemo, Moore, Simmons, & Avise, 1998), disease transmission (Plowright et al, 2017) and quantitative genetics (DiBattista, Feldheim, Garant, Gruber, & Hendry, 2009;Janeiro, Coltman, Festa-Bianchet, Pelletier, & Morrissey, 2017;Nguyen, Hayes, & Ingram, 2014). Genetic data can provide a powerful tool for identifying parents, and currently the main type of genetic marker used for parentage analysis in wild populations is microsatellites (Jones, Small, Paczolt, & Ratterman, 2010;Pemberton, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A bioinformatic pipeline for identifying informative SNP panels for parentage assignment from RADseq data

Andrews

Adams

Cassirer

et al. 2018

Molecular Ecology Resources

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The development of high-throughput sequencing technologies is dramatically increasing the use of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the field of genetics, but most parentage studies of wild populations still rely on microsatellites. We developed a bioinformatic pipeline for identifying SNP panels that are informative for parentage analysis from restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) data. This pipeline includes options for analysis with or without a reference genome, and provides methods to maximize genotyping accuracy and select sets of unlinked loci that have high statistical power. We test this pipeline on small populations of Mexican gray wolf and bighorn sheep, for which parentage analyses are expected to be challenging due to low genetic diversity and the presence of many closely related individuals. We compare the results of parentage analysis across SNP panels generated with or without the use of a reference genome, and between SNPs and microsatellites. For Mexican gray wolf, we conducted parentage analyses for 30 pups from a single cohort where samples were available from 64% of possible mothers and 53% of possible fathers, and the accuracy of parentage assignments could be estimated because true identities of parents were known a priori based on field data. For bighorn sheep, we conducted maternity analyses for 39 lambs from five cohorts where 77% of possible mothers were sampled, but true identities of parents were unknown. Analyses with and without a reference genome produced SNP panels with ≥95% parentage assignment accuracy for Mexican gray wolf, outperforming microsatellites at 78% accuracy. Maternity assignments were completely consistent across all SNP panels for the bighorn sheep, and were 74.4% consistent with assignments from microsatellites. Accuracy and consistency of parentage analysis were not reduced when using as few as 284 SNPs for Mexican gray wolf and 142 SNPs for bighorn sheep, indicating our pipeline can be used to develop SNP genotyping assays for parentage analysis with relatively small numbers of loci.

show abstract

Maternal condition and previous reproduction interact to affect offspring sex in a wild mammal

Cited by 18 publications

References 23 publications

Offspring sex ratio in mammals and the Trivers‐Willard hypothesis: In pursuit of unambiguous evidence

Offspring sex ratio in mammals and the Trivers‐Willard hypothesis: In pursuit of unambiguous evidence

Long‐term studies of bighorn sheep and mountain goats reveal fitness costs of reproduction

A bioinformatic pipeline for identifying informative SNP panels for parentage assignment from RADseq data

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About