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430 results for “reproductive success”
Data from: Rare events of massive plant reproductive investment lead to long-term density-dependent reproductive success
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Data from: Are there indirect fitness benefits of female extra-pair reproduction? Lifetime reproductive success of within-pair and extra-pair offspring
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Flowering synchrony drives reproductive success in a wind-pollinated tree
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Evidence of reproduction in the wild demonstrates initial success for reintroducing a critically endangered saproxylic hoverfly to a Scottish forest ecosystem
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Data from: Shifts in reproductive investment in response to competitors lowers male reproductive success
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Data from: Female and male genetic effects on offspring paternity: additive genetic (co)variances in female extra-pair reproduction and male paternity success in song sparrows (Melospiza melodia)
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Data from: Individual variation in energy-saving heterothermy affects survival and reproductive success
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Mating systems and predictors of relative reproductive success in a Cutthroat Trout subspecies of conservation concern
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Data from: Negative effects of individual heterozygosity on reproductive success in a wild bird population
<p>The evolutionary consequences of individual genetic diversity are frequently studied by assessing heterozygosity-fitness correlations (HFCs). The prevalence of positive and negative HFCs and the predominance of general versus local effects in wild populations are far from understood, partly because comprehensive studies testing for both inbreeding and outbreeding depression are lacking. We studied a genetically diverse population of blue tits in southern Germany using a genome-wide set of 87 microsatellites to investigate the relationship between proxies of reproductive success and measures of multi-locus and single-locus individual heterozygosity (MLH and SLH). We used complimentary measures of MLH and partitioned markers into functional categories according to their position in the blue tit genome. HFCs based on MLH were consistently negative for functional loci, whereas correlations were rather inconsistent for loci found in non-functional areas of the genome. Clutch size was the only reproductive variable showing a general effect. We found evidence for local effects for three measures of reproductive success: arrival date at the breeding site, the probability of breeding at the study site, and male reproductive success. For these, we observed consistent, and relatively strong, negative effects at one functional locus. Remarkably, this marker had a similar effect in another blue tit population from Austria (~400 km to the east). We suggest that a genetic local effect on timing of arrival might be responsible for most negative HFCs detected, with carry-over effects on other reproductive traits. This effect could reflect individual differences in the distance between overwintering areas and breeding sites.</p>
Antimicrobial capacity is related to body colouration and reproductive success in female spotless starlings
<p>Pathogenic microorganisms select for a plethora of defensive mechanisms on their hosts. In males of some species, flashy traits might signal antimicrobial capacity and, thus, they might be favoured in scenarios of sexual selection. Antimicrobial capacity of individuals may predict reproductive success in males, and it could be adapted to changing environments. However, evidence for these associations is still scarce in females. Here, we evaluated antimicrobial capacity of spotless starling (<i>Sturnus unicolor</i>) females during the mating and nestling-provisioning phase. We did this by measuring (i) the blood plasma inhibition capacity against 12 bacterial strains (antagonistic index), (ii) the constitutive innate humoral immunity (lysis and agglutination capacity, a non-specific first barrier of protection of hosts against microbial parasites), and (iii) the uropygial gland size and volume of secretion produced, relevant traits in the protection against, among others, feather-degrading bacteria. We also measured colouration of throat and back feathers, and of leg and beak integuments. This information was collected during the pre-laying and nestling stages to compare values from these two periods. We found an increase in the plasma antagonistic index from the pre-laying to the nestling period, while a decrease on the plasma capacity of agglutination of foreign antigens. Both plasma antagonistic index and humoral immune response measured before breeding were positively related to future female reproductive success. In addition, the level of antimicrobial capacity was related to colouration of leg skin and beak integuments and of back feathers. These associations suggest that, similar to males, females might show through their physical appearance their capacity to fight microbial infections; information that could be evaluated by their potential partners and by female competitors.</p>
Broader phenology of pollinator activity and higher plant reproductive success in an urban habitat compared to a rural one
<p>Datasets for 'Broader phenology of pollinator activity and higher plant reproductive success in an urban habitat compared to a rural one' by Zaninotto et al. (2020) in Ecology and Evolution.</p>
Parental investment does not directly affect reproductive success in the Saffron Finch
<p>In tropical species, the study of parental care and the description of the intraspecific variation of parental care remain relatively understudied, especially when compared to the vast works dedicated to species from the northern hemisphere. In Colombia, the Saffron Finch (<i>Sicalis flaveola</i>), is a species with a wide geographical distribution, and despite its abundance in open habitats and urban environments, little is known about its reproductive ecology. As a small‐bodied, short‐lived passerine, we postulated that the Saffron Finch should behave according to the "reproductive value hypothesis,'' investing in the current brood at the expense of future survival. Consequently, we predicted: (1) that parental investment would be associated with brood size and (2) parental investment would be positively associated with nestling growth rate and reproductive success (defined as the number of nestlings which reached fledging age). In 2018, two reproductive peaks of <i>S. flaveola flaveola</i> were documented in the Meléndez campus of Universidad del Valle, Cali. Direct observations and video cameras (> 1700 hours of recording) were used to monitor the nests from 38 different breeding pairs. We found that feeding visits and the number of regurgitation events were positively related to brood size. In an experiment of simulated nest predation, 85% of breeding pairs responded to the stimulus and parents who exhibited highly responsive behaviours (50%) raised nestlings with a higher growth rate. We also found that egg surface area positively affected the number of incubation bouts per hour. Whilst no relationship was found between overall parental investment and reproductive success, our results appear to show that the intensity of parental investment during reproduction was modulated by brood size. Our findings suggest that there are multiple ecological factors that influence reproductive success in the Saffron Finch, and reinforce the need for longer term studies of tropical passerines.</p>
Wildflower strips enhance wild bee reproductive success
<p>1. Intensification of agriculture has resulted in a simplification and fragmentation of agroecosystems. Yet, its impact on the reproductive success and population dynamics of wild bees, and how adverse effects can be mitigated, remains poorly understood.</p> <p>2. We established populations of seven solitary bee species varying in body size in experimentally sown wild flower strips (WFS), existing semi-natural habitats (SNH; forest edges) and isolated sites lacking WFS and SNH in the local surrounding (350 m radius) to test whether (i) the wild bee species use planted flowers of wildflower strips (WFS) to provision offspring with pollen, (ii) whether vicinity to WFS reduces their foraging trip duration, (iii) parasitism rate, and (iv) increases bee reproductive success of nesting populations. Furthermore, we tested whether the effect size depends on the body size of the bee species considered.</p> <p>3. We show that wild bees nesting in WFS provisioned their offspring primarily with pollen from plants of WFS. This led to shorter foraging trips of all bee species nesting in WFS compared to bees nesting in isolated (unrestored) sites and overall increased reproductive success (i.e. more viable offspring). Reproductive success of bees nesting in WFS was also higher, and parasitism rates lower, compared to bees nesting at forest edges. Smaller-potentially less mobile-bee species benefitted more than larger ones from WFS plantings in terms of reproductive success.</p> <p>4. Synthesis and applications.Our findings demonstrate that diverse WFS can enhance the reproductive success of multiple solitary wild bee species, thereby mitigating negative impacts of agroecosystem simplification through the provision of suitable floral resources and reduced foraging times required for offspring provisioning. Our study further indicates that a relatively fine-meshed network of wildflower plantings and nesting habitats is required to most effectively enhance reproduction and populations of solitary bees in agricultural landscapes. </p>
Pathways linking female personality with reproductive success are trait and year-specific
<p>Personality (i.e. among-individual variation in average behavior) often covaries with fitness, but how such personality-fitness relationships come about is poorly understood. Here, we explore potential mechanisms by which two female personality traits (female-female aggression and female nest defense as manifested by hissing behavior) were linked with annual reproductive success in a population of great tits (<i>Parus major</i>), a socially monogamous species with biparental care. We hypothesized that personality-related differences in reproductive success result from variation in reproductive decision (lay date, brood size) and/or parental provisioning rates. Relative support for these mechanisms was evaluated using path-analysis on data collected in two successive years. We reveal that larger broods were provisioned at a higher rate by both parents and that female, but not male, provisioning rate was involved in the trade-off between offspring number (brood size) and fledgling mass. Among-individual variation in female aggression, via its association with female provisioning rate, was negatively linked to fledgling mass (i.e. indirect effect), yet only in one of the study years. Male provisioning rate did not influence these relationships. In contrast, among-individual variation in hissing behavior was directly and negatively linked with fledgling mass in both years, via an underlying mechanism that remains to be identified (i.e. direct effect). Together, our findings emphasize that personality-fitness relationships may come about via different mechanisms across personality traits and/or years, thereby illustrating additional complexity in how selection might act on and maintain among-individual variation in behavioral phenotypes in the wild.</p>
Data from: Variance in within-pair reproductive success influences the opportunity for selection annually and over the lifetimes of males in a multi-brooded songbird
<p>In socially monogamous species, male reproductive success consists of 'within-pair' offspring produced with their socially-paired mate(s), and 'extra-pair' offspring produced with additional females throughout the population. Both reproductive pathways offer distinct opportunities for selection in wild populations, as each is composed of separate components of mate attraction, female fecundity, and paternity allocation. Identifying key sources of variance and covariance among these components is a crucial step towards understanding the reproductive strategies that males use to maximize fitness both annually and over their lifetimes. We use 16 years of complete reproductive data from a population of black-throated blue warblers (<i>Setophaga caerulescens</i>) to partition variance in male annual and lifetime reproductive success, and thereby identify if the opportunity for selection varies over the lifetimes of individual males and what reproductive strategies likely favor maximum lifetime fitness. The majority of variance in male reproduction was attributable to within-pair success, but the specific effects of individual components of variance differed between total annual and total lifetime reproductive success. Positive overall lifetime covariance between within-pair and extra-pair components indicates that males able to maximize within-pair success, particularly with double-brooding females, likely achieve higher overall lifetime fitness via both within-pair and extra-pair reproductive pathways.</p>
Data from: Do slower movers have lower reproductive success and higher mutation load?
Deleterious mutations occur frequently in eukaryotes, resulting in individuals carrying multiple alleles that decrease their fitness. At a population level, if unchecked, accumulation of this mutation load can ultimately lead to extinction. How selection counters the accumulation of mutation load, limiting declines in population fitness, is not well understood. Here, we use manipulative experiments in zebrafish (Danio rerio) to investigate the opportunities for selection on mutation load. Inducing high mutation load through mutagenesis, we applied one generation of within-family selection on locomotor performance, and characterised both the direct response to this selection and the indirect response of reproductive success. Offspring of slow swimming parents exhibited age-dependent declines in swimming speed, while their cousins, with faster swimming parents, did not. This pattern mimics previously documented differences between high and low mutation load populations of zebrafish, suggesting that slow swimming siblings inherited (and transmitted) more mutations than their faster swimming siblings. Crosses among offspring of slow swimming fish had, on average, <75% of the reproductive success of crosses among offspring of fast swimming parents, or crosses of offspring of slow swimmers with offspring of fast swimmers. This evidence of mutationally correlated swimming speed and reproductive success reveals the potential for concordant selection on mutation load through different fitness components. There was no evidence that crosses within families (where parents potentially shared the same mutations inherited from their common ancestor) had lower reproductive success than crosses among families, suggesting that viability selection was not acting predominantly through lethal recessive homozygotes. Rather, patterns of reproductive success are suggestive of effects of mutation number per se on embryo viability. Overall, our results highlight the potential for early life mortality to remove deleterious mutations, and the need to account for this mortality when investigating the evolutionary dynamics of mutation load.
Data from: Lower bumblebee colony reproductive success in agricultural compared to urban environments
Urbanisation represents a rapidly growing driver of land-use change. While it is clear that urbanisation impacts species abundance and diversity, direct effects of urban land-use on animal reproductive success are rarely documented. Here we show that urban land-use is linked to long-term colony reproductive output in a key pollinator. We reared colonies from wild-caught bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) queens, placed them at sites characterised by varying degrees of urbanisation from inner city to rural farmland, and monitored the production of sexual offspring across the entire colony cycle. Our land-use cluster analysis identified three site categories, and this categorization was a strong predictor of colony performance. Crucially, colonies in the two clusters characterized by urban development produced more sexual offspring than those in the cluster dominated by agricultural land. These colonies also reached higher peak size, had more food stores, encountered fewer parasite invasions and survived for longer. Our results show a link between urbanisation and bumblebee colony reproductive success, supporting the theory that urban areas provide a refuge for pollinator populations in an otherwise barren agricultural landscape.
Data from: Sexual selection in a hermaphroditic plant through female reproductive success
Sexual selection is well accepted as a mechanism of shaping traits in animals. However, whether and how floral traits are sexually selected in hermaphroditic plants remains less clear. Here, we use Passiflora incarnata to address how floral traits that affect pollination success are selected via female function. We manipulated the ecological context by limiting pollination and adding resources to expand the phenotypic distribution and alter the intensity of sexual selection. Total sexual selection favoured lower style deflexion because of its impact on pollen receipt and subsequent seed number. However, total selection on style deflexion was not significant, indicating additional selection on style deflexion through routes other than mating. Limited pollination and enhanced resources were expected to alter the distribution of pollen deposition and seed production and therefore intensify the Bateman gradient – the relationship between pollen receipt and seed production. Indeed, the Bateman gradient was strongest when pollination was limited, suggesting potential for sexual selection to influence floral trait evolution under these conditions. Overall, we found floral traits may be shaped by sexual selection through female reproductive success in this hermaphroditic plant. These results support manipulations to enhance the variance in mating as a mechanism to understand patterns of sexual selection.
Data from: Size-dependent ejaculation strategies and reproductive success in the yellow dung fly, Scathophaga stercoraria
Theory predicts that sperm competition will favour the production of larger ejaculates. However, because the benefits of greater reproductive investment are balanced by the costs of spermatogenesis, expenditure should depend on male physiology, mating rate and the relationship between additional investment and fertilization gains. In the yellow dung fly, Scathophagastercoraria, males adopt size-dependent alternative mating tactics that are associated with discrete ecological resources (foraging and oviposition substrates), although males switch between these environments throughout their lives. By copulating on foraging substrate (fruit or flowers), males can bypass intense mate competition that occurs at oviposition sites (cow dung), but as a consequence, must occupy a disfavoured mating role (i.e. face a greater risk that their ejaculate will be displaced from storage prior to fertilization). Small males often mate on foraging substrate, whereas large males mate in this environment only during feeding bouts. Optimal ejaculate expenditure should therefore depend on male size and their current mating role. By measuring copula duration (i.e. ejaculate expenditure) of natural matings and assigning paternity to resulting offspring, we confirmed that copulations on dung sire approximately three times as many offspring as those on foraging substrate. Furthermore, large males reduced copula duration on fruit, as predicted, since this strategy enables greater investment into high-payoff matings on dung. Conversely, small males copulated for shorter durations on dung than on foraging substrate, perhaps to minimize the risk of being displaced from copula by a rival. These patterns of ejaculate expenditure translated into greater offspring production for large males on dung and for small males on fruit. We discuss the possible proximate factors driving these size- and context-dependent patterns of ejaculate allocation by yellow dung fly males. Together, our findings shed light on the allocation strategies and reproductive consequences of alternative mating tactics.
Data from: Temporal constraints on the potential role of fry odors as cues of past reproductive success for spawning lake trout
Deciding where to reproduce is a major challenge for most animals. Many select habitats based upon cues of successful reproduction by conspecifics, such as the presence of offspring from past reproductive events. For example, some fishes select spawning habitat following odors released by juveniles whose rearing habitat overlaps with spawning habitat. However, juveniles may emigrate before adults begin to search for spawning habitat; hence, the efficacy of juvenile cues could be constrained by degradation or dissipation rates. In lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), odors deposited by the previous year's offspring have been hypothesized to guide adults to spawning reefs. However, in most extant populations, lake trout fry emigrate from spawning reefs during the spring and adults spawn during the fall. Therefore, we postulated that the role of fry odors in guiding habitat selection might be constrained by the time between fry emigration and adult spawning. Time course chemical, physiological, and behavioral assays indicated that the odors deposited by fry likely degrade or dissipate before adults select spawning habitats. Furthermore, fry feces did not attract wild lake trout to constructed spawning reefs in Lake Huron. Taken together, our results indicate fry odors are unlikely to act as cues for lake trout searching for spawning reefs in populations whose juveniles emigrate before the spawning season, and underscore the importance of environmental constraints on social cues.
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
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DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
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The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
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