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64 results for “clutch size”
Data from: Heterozygosity predicts clutch and egg size but not plasticity in a house sparrow population with no evidence of inbreeding
We investigated the link between heterozygosity and the reaction norm attributes of reproductive performance in female house sparrows (Passer domesticus). We collected data on clutch size, egg size, hatching success, and nestling survival in 2 816 nesting attempts made by 791 marked individuals over a 16 year period. Pedigree analysis revealed no evidence of inbreeding. Neither parent-offspring regression nor an animal model revealed significant heritability in clutch or egg size. We selected 42 females that laid at least seven clutches at our study site and used a survey of 21 autosomal microsatellite loci to estimate heterozygosity for each female. We controlled for phenotypic plasticity and found that both clutch and egg size showed significant positive correlations with heterozygosity. We found no evidence that heterozygosity influenced the slope of individual reaction norms. Further analysis suggested that clutch size was affected by heterozygosity across the genome, but egg size had more complex relationships, with evidence favoring the influence of multiple loci. Given the apparent lack of inbreeding and large population size, our results suggest associative overdominance as the likely mechanism for the impact of heterozygosity, but also created a puzzle about the process producing associations between neutral markers and the genes affecting clutch size or egg size. One possible explanation is a long term residual effect of the historical bottleneck that occurred when house sparrows were introduced into North America. The existence of HFCs in a population with considerable phenotypic plasticity and little inbreeding implies that the effects of heterozygosity may be more significant than previously thought.
Data from: Nest-box temperature affects clutch size, incubation initiation, and nestling health in great tits
Prenatal maternal effects can be a source of phenotypic plasticity and may play a role in adaptation to climate change. However, we do not know how far temperature could influence such effects, if at all. We studied the influence of temperature during egg laying on maternal reproductive investment and on the phenotype of adult females, adult males, and nestlings. We expected temperature to have an effect, as it influences maintenance costs for females, who can also use it as a cue of the advancement of the breeding season. We experimentally increased night-time nest-box temperatures by approximately 1 °C throughout the entire laying period in great tits (Parus major). Clutch size was negatively correlated with laying date in heated females. Heated females did not delay incubation after clutch completion as frequently as control females did. Finally, blood sedimentation rate, which is an indicator of acute infections and inflammatory diseases, was positively correlated with hatching date in control broods. This suggests that nestlings were of lower quality in late-hatched broods than in early-hatched broods. This seasonal effect was not detected in heated nests. Our results show that a small increase in temperature during laying can influence breeding strategy and nestling characteristics. These results suggest that birds used temperature as a cue of seasonal advancement to adjust breeding phenology, with beneficial effects on nestling health. To better understand the consequences of maternal adjustments during egg laying, it would be interesting to combine studies with heating treatment during different periods of the breeding cycle.
Data from: The trade-off between clutch size and egg mass in tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) is modulated by female body mass
Egg production is a costly component of reproduction for female birds in terms of energy expenditure and maternal investment. Because resources are typically limited, clutch size and egg mass are expected to be constrained, and this putative trade-off between offspring number and size is at the core of life history theory. Nevertheless, empirical evidence for this trade-off is equivocal at best, as individual heterogeneity in resource acquisition and allocation may hamper the detection of the negative correlation between egg number and mass within populations. Here, we investigated how female body mass and landscape composition influences clutch size, egg mass, and the relationship between these two traits. To do so, we fitted linear mixed models using data from tree swallows Tachycineta bicolor breeding in a network of 400 nestboxes located along a gradient of agricultural intensity between 2004 and 2011. Our dataset comprised 1463 broods for clutch size analyses and 4371 eggs (from 847 broods laid between 2005–2008) for egg mass analyses. Our results showed that agricultural intensity negatively impacted clutch size, but not egg mass nor the relationship between these two traits. Female mass, on the other hand, modulated the trade-off between clutch size and egg mass. For heavier females, both traits increased jointly, without evidence of a trade-off. However, for lighter females, there was a clear negative relationship between clutch size and egg mass. This work shows that accounting for individual heterogeneity in body mass allows the detection of a clutch size/egg mass trade-off that would have remained undetected otherwise. Identifying habitat and individual effects on resource allocation towards reproductive traits may help bridging the gap between predictions from theory and empirical evidence on life history trade-offs.
Data from: The evolution of clutch size in hosts of avian brood parasites
Coevolution with avian brood parasites shapes a range of traits in their hosts, including morphology, behavior, and breeding systems. Here we explore whether brood parasitism is also associated with the evolution of host clutch size. Several studies have proposed that hosts of highly virulent parasites could decrease the costs of parasitism by evolving a smaller clutch size, because hosts with smaller clutches will lose fewer progeny when their clutch is parasitized. We describe a model of the evolution of clutch size, which challenges this logic and shows instead that an increase in clutch size (or no change) should evolve in hosts. We test this prediction using a broad-scale comparative analysis to ask whether there are differences in clutch size within hosts and between hosts and nonhosts. Consistent with our model, this analysis revealed that host species do not have smaller clutches and that hosts that incur larger costs from raising a parasite lay larger clutches. We suggest that brood parasitism might be an influential factor in clutch-size evolution and could potentially select for the evolution of larger clutches in host species.
Density dependence of clutch size and offspring sex ratio in starling colonies
<p><span>Optimal life-history theory predicts that individuals should adjust both the number and the sex of their offspring to maximize fitness in response to environmental and social factors such as breeding density. While reductions in optimal clutch size are well-studied in birds, the evidence for sex ratio adjustments is still equivocal and, so far, we lack a thorough understanding of how these strategies interact to maximize fitness. Here, we investigate how breeding density simultaneously affects brood sex ratio and clutch size in a sexually dimorphic and polygynous bird. We tested the prediction that mothers breeding at a higher density lay smaller clutches and overproduce daughters, the sex with less variable fitness returns and that disperses further away from their natal territory. We distributed nest boxes at either a high (HD) or a low density (LD) and monitored clutch sizes and sex ratios during five years in a wild breeding colony of spotless starlings. While mothers breeding in HD nests produced more daughters than those breeding in LD nests, the density dependence of clutch size varied among years, with a tendency to lay smaller clutches in HD nests. Our results suggest that mothers consistently adjust offspring sex ratio in response to breeding density, whereas adjustments in clutch size varied in a more complex way. These results support the role of sex allocation strategies in response to density and show that further theoretical and empirical research is required to understand the interaction between clutch size and sex ratio adjustments in animals.</span></p>
Data for: Protective geometry and reproductive anatomy as candidate determinants of clutch size variation in pentatomid bugs
<p><span>Many animals lay their eggs in clusters. Eggs on the periphery of clusters can be at higher risk of mortality. We asked whether the most commonly occurring clutch sizes in pentatomid bugs could result from geometrical arrangements that maximize the proportion of eggs in the cluster's interior. Although the most common clutch sizes do not correspond with geometric optimality, stink bugs do tend to lay clusters of eggs in shapes that protect increasing proportions of their offspring as clutch sizes increase. We also considered whether ovariole number, an aspect of reproductive anatomy that may be a fixed trait across many pentatomids, could explain observed distributions of clutch sizes. The most common clutch sizes across many species correspond with multiples of ovariole number. However, there are species with the same number of ovarioles that lay clutches of widely varying size, among which multiples of ovariole number are not over-represented. In pentatomid bugs, reproductive anatomy appears to be more important than egg mass geometry in determining clutch size uniformity. In addition, within this group of animals that has lost most of its variation in ovariole number, clutches with a broad range of shapes and sizes may still be laid. </span></p>
Figure 2 in Effect of body size, age and timing of breeding on clutch and egg size of female Eastern Gray Treefrogs, Hyla versicolor
Figure 2. Determinants of clutch size (# eggs) in female Hyla versicolor. (A) Relationship between female body length and clutch size; (B) relationship between body condition and clutch size; (C) relationship between age and clutch size; (D) relationship between breeding season date and clutch size. Second and third clutches of repeat-breeding females are indicated as red symbols. Significant relationships are indicated by trendlines (see also Table 2).
Figure 1 in Effect of body size, age and timing of breeding on clutch and egg size of female Eastern Gray Treefrogs, Hyla versicolor
Figure 1. Lifespan, age and between-year growth of female Hyla versicolor. (A) Age distribution of females in the study population, and the relationship between age and body length. (B) Change in body length of the 7 females that were recaptured in consecutive years. Gray lines indicate averages.
Figure 2. Bubble plot showing diamondback terrapin clutch sizes recorded 1998–2012 in Long-term increases in clutch size in common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) and diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin)
Figure 2. Bubble plot showing diamondback terrapin clutch sizes recorded 1998–2012. Bubble size indicates the number of clutches of the same size.
Figure 1. Bubble plot showing snapping turtle clutch sizes recorded 2004–2015 in Long-term increases in clutch size in common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) and diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin)
Figure 1. Bubble plot showing snapping turtle clutch sizes recorded 2004–2015. Bubble size indicates the number of clutches of the same size.
FIGURE 1. A in The advertisement call and clutch size of the Golden-capped Boulder-frog Cophixalus pakayakulangun (Anura: Microhylidae)
FIGURE 1. A single call of: (A) C. pakayakulangun and (B) C. kulakula. Top row shows waveform, displaying amplitude (y-axis) against time (x-axis, seconds). Bottom row shows spectrogram, displaying call frequency (y-axis) and intensity (degree of shading) against time (x-axis, seconds). Air temperature for both recordings was 28°C.
Data from: Multiple aspects of plasticity in clutch size vary among populations of a globally distributed songbird
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Data from: Egg size and offspring performance in the collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis): a within-clutch approach
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Data from: Higher rates of pre‐breeding condition gain positively impacts clutch size: a mechanistic test of the condition‐dependent individual optimization model
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Data from: It takes two: heritable male effects on reproductive timing but not clutch size in a wild bird population
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Data from: Nest-box temperature affects clutch size, incubation initiation, and nestling health in great tits
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Data from: The trade-off between clutch size and egg mass in tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) is modulated by female body mass
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Data from: Two eggs, two different constraints: a potential explanation for the puzzling intra-clutch egg size dimorphism in Eudyptes penguins
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Data from: A conceptual framework for clutch size evolution in songbirds
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Host and oak species impact clutch and adult size of Oobius rudnevi, the only known egg parasitoid of Cerambyx beetles
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