Maternal Effects and the Potential for Evolution in a Natural Population of Animals

McAdam, Andrew G.; Boutin, Stan; Réale, Denis; Berteaux, Dominique

doi:10.1111/j.0014-3820.2002.tb01396.x

Cited by 127 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 33 publications

(36 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The model therefore included sex-specific dominance and maternal effects (McAdam et al, 2002;Wilson et al, 2010;Wolak and Keller, 2014) as random effects. Because we had several nest box choices for a fraction of individuals over the years, we accounted for a permanent environment effect by including the identities of the male and female as random effects.…”

Section: Animal Model At the Pair Level: Specification And Variance Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heterospecific Nest Site Copying Behavior in a Wild Bird: Assessing the Influence of Genetics and Past Experience on a Joint Breeding Phenotype

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Breeding site selection is often a joint decision of pair members in species with biparental care and the experience of both pair members may influence the use of information for site selection. Nevertheless, quantitative genetics of joint information use for site selection remains unexplored so far. We used an experimental approach to quantify the relative importance of genetics (heritability) and past experience (age, familiarity with the environment, previous breeding success, previous information use) in heterospecific social information use for nest site selection in wild collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis). Flycatchers collect social information from resident tits for nest site selection. We created an apparent preference of tits for a novel nest site feature and recorded choices of flycatchers (copying or rejecting the tit preference). Copying behavior was stronger for naive individuals but also differed between years, which could be explained by contrasting seasonality in the demonstrator species. Past experience as reflected by age affected subsequent use of social information: pairs with a yearling male were more likely to copy the heterospecific preference than pairs with older immigrant males. There was no general pattern in successive individual choices over the years. Accordingly, individual repeatability in copying tit preference was very low. At the pair level, we estimated sex-specific direct and indirect genetic effects on the joint nest site decision and found no sex-specific heritability and no cross-sex genetic correlation. Our results confirm the importance of past experience for social information use and suggest that social information use is highly plastic and most likely not genetically inherited in collared flycatchers. Whether individuals use social information should be related to environmentally-induced changes in the quality of information and thus be context-dependent. Selection may therefore act on the ability to optimally use social information in varying environments and on the processes underlying such adjustment, such as learning, rather than the use of information itself.

show abstract

Section: Animal Model At the Pair Level: Specification And Variance Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heterospecific Nest Site Copying Behavior in a Wild Bird: Assessing the Influence of Genetics and Past Experience on a Joint Breeding Phenotype

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A variety of genetic, maternal and environmental factors can lead to variation among individuals within a population. For example, in the Kluane red squirrel population, it has been shown that the individual traits vary with territory quality (LaMontagne 2007), year of birth (Descamps et al 2008b) or characteristics of the mothers (McAdam et al 2002;Descamps et al 2008a) Such individual heterogeneity has to be accounted for when studying trade-offs and/or age-specific change in the life-history traits ( Vaupel & Yashin 1985;Cam et al 2002;Van de Pol & Verhulst 2006;Nussey et al 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survival costs of reproduction vary with age in North American red squirrels

et al. 2008

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The costs of reproduction are expected to be higher under unfavourable conditions, so that breeding in years of low food supply should have important costs. In addition, the costs of reproduction may be contingent on the age of individuals, and young growing and old senescent individuals should suffer higher costs than the prime-age ones. We tested these predictions by investigating the costs of reproduction as a function of food availability and age in female North American red squirrels using the long-term data on survival and reproduction. We found that the costs of reproduction were independent of food supply, and we did not detect any trade-off between the current and future reproduction. We also did not detect any survival cost of reproduction for the prime-age females, but found evidence for survival costs in yearlings and old (6 years or above) females with successfully breeding individuals having a lower chance of survival compared with unsuccessful or non-breeding ones. These results supported our prediction that the costs of reproduction depended on the age of female red squirrels and were higher in young growing and old senescent individuals. Our study also indicated that, in contrast to large herbivores, heterogeneity in individual quality and viability selection in red squirrels do not affect the study of trade-offs and of the age variation in life-history traits.

show abstract

“…That is, in addition to producing too few offspring if litter size is reduced owing to high early mortality, monandrous females might also sometimes exceed optimal litter size, as a consequence of adopting a compensation strategy of increased ova production. This could also be costly because exceeding optimal litter size can have long-term fitness consequences both for offspring growth and survival, and/or female survival and future reproductive success (Aparicio 1993;Morris 1996;Sikes & Ylö nen 1998;Humphries & Boutin 2000;McAdam et al 2002;Réale et al 2003), although such costs may be avoided in species with paternal or communal care of offspring. Alternatively or additionally, increased variation in litter size associated with monandry might reflect ecological factors that were not considered in the present study (for example, Sikes 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Female multiple mating behaviour, early reproductive failure and litter size variation in mammals

Stockley

2003

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Female promiscuity is widespread among mammals, although its function is poorly understood. Recently, much interest has been generated by the hypothesis that female promiscuity, combined with postcopulatory paternity-biasing mechanisms, may function to reduce the costs of reproductive failure resulting from genetic incompatibility. Here, a comparative approach is used to determine if average rates of reproductive failure differ for polytocous mammal species with contrasting levels of female multiple-mating behaviour. After control for phylogeny, promiscuous species were found to have significantly lower rates of early reproductive failure than monogamous and polygynous species, in which females are relatively monandrous. Monandrous females appear to compensate for higher early reproductive failure with increased ova production, and thus produce comparable average litter sizes to those of more promiscuous females. However, there is significantly more variation around the average litter sizes produced by relatively monandrous females. These findings are broadly consistent with predictions of the genetic incompatibility avoidance hypothesis, although it is emphasized that alternative explanations cannot be ruled out on the basis of the comparative evidence presented. Further studies are needed to explore ecological correlates of multiple-mating behaviour, to investigate potential post-copulatory paternity-biasing mechanisms, and to identify the causes of reproductive failure in natural mammal populations.

show abstract

Maternal Effects and the Potential for Evolution in a Natural Population of Animals

Cited by 127 publications

References 33 publications

Heterospecific Nest Site Copying Behavior in a Wild Bird: Assessing the Influence of Genetics and Past Experience on a Joint Breeding Phenotype

Heterospecific Nest Site Copying Behavior in a Wild Bird: Assessing the Influence of Genetics and Past Experience on a Joint Breeding Phenotype

Survival costs of reproduction vary with age in North American red squirrels

Female multiple mating behaviour, early reproductive failure and litter size variation in mammals

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About