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40 results for “maternal investment”
Data from: The more you get, the more you give: Positive cascading effects shape the evolutionary potential of prenatal maternal investment
<p>Data from 'The more you get, the more you give: Positive cascading effects shape the evolutionary potential of prenatal maternal investment'</p> <p> </p> <p>Description of variables in CME_dat.csv</p> <p>egg.mass - mean offspring egg mass (grams)</p> <p>maternal.line - selection line of mother (H- high investment, L - low investment)</p> <p>paternal.line - selection lines of father (H- high investment, L - low investment)</p> <p>replicate - selection line replicate</p> <p>animal - animal id (links with data from Pick et al. 2016 on dryad)</p> <p>mother - mother id</p> <p>father - father id</p> <p>maternal.egg.mass - mean maternal egg mass (grams)</p>
Experimental reduction of haemosporidian infection affects maternal reproductive investment, parental behaviour, and offspring condition
<p>When hosts have a long coevolutionary history with their parasites, fitness costs of chronic infection have often been assumed to be negligible. Yet, experimental manipulation of infections sometimes reveals effects of parasites on their hosts, particularly during reproduction. Whether these effects translate into fitness costs remains unclear. Here, we present the results of an experimental study conducted in a free-ranging population of red-winged blackbirds (<em>Agelaius</em> <em>phoeniceus</em>) naturally experiencing a high prevalence of haemosporidian infections, with > 95% of breeding adults infected with parasites from one or more haemosporidian genus. To assess effects of infection during reproduction, we manipulated adult red-winged blackbird females' parasite burden by administering an anti-haemosporidian medication before onset of egg-laying. Experimental reduction of infection resulted in significant benefits to mothers and their offspring. Medicated females laid heavier clutches, invested more in incubation and provisioning behaviour, and produced more fledglings than control females. Nestlings of medicated females had higher haematocrit, higher blood glucose, and lower reactive oxygen metabolites than nestlings of control females. Overall, our results provide evidence that, even in a species with a long history of high prevalence of infection, parasites can lead to decreased maternal investment and offspring quality, substantially reducing fitness.</p>
Experimental reduction of haemosporidian infection affects maternal reproductive investment, parental behaviour, and offspring condition
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Prolonged maternal investment in northern bottlenose whales alters our understanding of beaked whale reproductive life history
<div>Nursing and weaning periods are poorly understood in cetaceans due to the difficulty of assessing underwater behaviour in the wild. However, the onset and completion of weaning are critical turning points for individual development and survival, with implications for a species life history including reproductive potential. δ15N and δ13C deposited in odontocete teeth annuli provide a lifetime record of diet, offering an opportunity to investigate variation and trends in fundamental biology. While available reproductive parameters for beaked whales have largely been inferred from single records of stranded or hunted animals and extrapolated across species, here we examine the weaning strategy and duration of nursing in northern bottlenose whales (<i>Hyperoodon ampullatus</i>) by measuring stable isotopes deposited in teeth growth layer groups (GLGs). Using a collection of <i>H. ampullatus </i>teeth taken from whales killed during the whaling era (N = 48) and from two stranded specimens, we compared ontogenetic variation of δ15N and δ13C found in annual GLGs across all individuals, by sex and by region. We detected age-based trends in both δ15N and δ13C that are consistent across regions and males and females, and indicate that nursing is prolonged and weaning does not conclude until whales are 3-4 years old, substantially later than previous estimates of 1 year. Incorporating a prolonged period of maternal care into <i>H. ampullatus</i> life history significantly reduces their reproductive potential, with broad implications for models of beaked whale life history, energetics and the species' recovery from whaling.</div>
Data from: Adaptive maternal investment in the wild? Links between maternal growth trajectory and offspring size, growth, and survival in contrasting environments
Life history theory predicts that investment per offspring should correlate negatively with the quality of environment offspring are anticipated to encounter; parents may use their own experience as juveniles to predict this environment and may modulate offspring traits such as growth capacity as well as initial size. We manipulated nutrient levels in the juvenile habitat of wild Atlantic salmon Salmo salar to investigate the hypothesis that the egg size maximizing juvenile growth and survival depends on environmental quality. We also tested whether offspring traits were related to parental growth trajectory. Mothers that grew fast when young produced more, smaller offspring than mothers that had grown slowly to reach the same size. Despite their size disadvantage, offspring of faster-growing mothers grew faster than those of slow-growing mothers in all environments, counter to the expectation that they would be competitively disadvantaged. However, they had lower relative survival in environments where the density of older predatory/competitor fish was relatively high. These links between maternal (but not paternal) growth trajectory and offspring survival rate were independent of egg size, underscoring that mothers may be adjusting egg traits other than size to suit the anticipated environment faced by their offspring.
Maternal investment and early thermal conditions affect performance and antipredator responses
<p>Exposure to increased temperatures during early development can lead to phenotypic plasticity in morphology, physiology, and behaviour across a range of ectothermic animals. In addition, maternal effects are known to be important contributors to phenotypic variation in offspring. Whether the two factors interact to shape offspring morphology and behaviour has been barely explored. This is critical since climate change is expected to impact both incubation temperature and maternal resource allocation and stress levels. Using a fully factorial design, and Bayesian multivariate mixed models, we explored how the manipulation of early thermal environment and yolk-quantity in eggs affected the morphology, performance and antipredator behaviour of two sympatric Australian skink species (<em>Lampropholis delicata</em> and <em>L. guichenoti</em>). We found that juveniles from the hot treatment were larger than those on the cold treatment in <em>L. guichenoti</em> but not <em>L. delicata</em>. Using repeated behavioural measures for individual lizards, we found an interaction between incubation temperature and maternal investment in performance, with running speed being affected in a species-specific way by the treatment. We predicted that changes in performance should influence antipredator responses. In support of this prediction, we found that maternal investment impacted antipredator behaviour, with animals from the yolk-reduced and cold treatment resuming activity faster after a simulated predatory attack in <em>L. delicata</em>. However, the prediction was not supported in <em>L. guichenoti</em>. Our results highlight the importance of exploring the multifaceted role that environments play across generations to understand how different anthropogenic factors will impact wildlife in the future.</p>
Code and data for "Costly lifetime maternal investment in killer whales"
<p>R code and data necessary to reproduce all analyses from the manuscript "Costly lifetime maternal investment in killer whales." Included is reproductive history data on 40 southern resident killer whale females, the R code to fit Bayesian regression models, code to produce the plots in the manuscript, and code to perform sensitivity analysis for fixed effect priors.</p>
Data from: Maternal investment is positively associated with the presence of extra-pair offspring in a socially monogamous songbird
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Prolonged maternal investment in northern bottlenose whales alters our understanding of beaked whale reproductive life history
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Data from: Adaptive maternal investment in the wild? Links between maternal growth trajectory and offspring size, growth, and survival in contrasting environments
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Maternal investment and early thermal conditions affect performance and antipredator responses
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Data for: Maternal glucocorticoid levels during incubation predict breeding success, but not reproductive investment, in a free-ranging bird
<p>The hormone corticosterone (CORT) has been hypothesized to be linked with fitness, but the directionality of the relationship is unclear. The "CORT-fitness hypothesis" proposes that high levels of CORT arise from challenging environmental conditions, resulting in lower reproductive success (a negative relationship). In contrast, the "CORT-adaptation hypothesis" suggests that, during energetically demanding periods, CORT will mediate physiological or behavioural changes that result in increased reproductive investment and success (a positive relationship). During two breeding seasons, we experimentally manipulated circulating CORT levels in female tree swallows (<i>Tachycineta bicolor</i>) prior to egg laying, and measured subsequent reproductive effort, breeding success, and maternal survival. When females were recaptured during egg incubation and again during the nestling stage, the CORT levels were similar among individuals in each treatment group, and maternal treatment had no effect on indices of fitness. By considering variation among females, we found support for the "CORT-adaptation hypothesis"; there was a significant positive relationship between CORT levels during incubation and hatching and fledging success. During the nestling stage CORT levels were unrelated to any measure of investment or success. Within the environmental context of our study, relationships between maternal glucocorticoid levels and indices fitness vary across reproductive stages.</p>
Data from: How maternal investment varies with environmental factors and the age and physiological state of wild tsetse Glossina pallidipes and Glossina morsitans morsitans
Theory suggests females should optimize resource allocation across reproductive bouts to maximize lifetime reproduction, balancing current and future reproductive efforts according to physiological state and projected survival and reproduction. Tests of these ideas focus on long-lived vertebrates: few measure age-related reproductive output in iteroparous invertebrates, or partition reserves between those allocated to offspring versus mothers. We investigated how maternal age, and environmental and physiological factors influence reproductive investment in wild tsetse, Glossina pallidipes Austen and G. morsitans morsitans Westwood. Tsetse provide a tractable system to measure reproductive allocation. Females exhibit high maternal investment, producing single, large offspring that rely exclusively on maternal reserves. We find that mothers in better physiological condition and experiencing cooler temperatures produce larger offspring. Pupal size increases significantly but weakly with age. In both species, females with less fat invest proportionately more in offspring. Post-partum fat decreases in flies with badly frayed wings: poor flight capability may limit their feeding efficiency, or they may sacrifice more reserves as a terminal investment. Our results support evidence that offspring size increases with maternal size, investment depends on the environment, and females with lower chances of future reproduction invest more into current offspring. We discuss the implications of maternal effects for predicting vector population responses to environmental change.
Data from: Male and female helper effects on maternal investment and adult survival in red-winged fairy-wrens
Despite its importance for the evolution of cooperative breeding, it has proven difficult to determine whether helpers improve their recipients' fitness. Helpers affect fitness in multiple ways, both positive and negative, but their effects can also be concealed through reduced maternal investment. Furthermore, determining the direction of causation is difficult, as helper presence may indicate a productive territory, rather than high productivity indicating an effect of help. In cooperatively breeding red-winged fairy-wrens (Malurus elegans) groups reduce care when they have male helpers, but groups with female helpers do not, so nestlings receive more food. Thus our predictions vary with helper sex rather than helper number, and by studying within-group changes with regard to group composition we separate phenotypically plastic responses from among-group correlations. Females did not reduce egg size in response to an increasing number of female helpers. However, more male or female helpers allowed females to lay larger clutches and more female helpers reduced re-nesting intervals. There was mixed support for a benefit of load lightening: Helpers, but not breeders, gained survival benefits with increasing number of male helpers. However, helper survival decreased with the number of female helpers, suggesting that increased competition counterbalanced these male helper benefits. We also found consistent among-group differences, which would have erroneously been interpreted as helper effects had we not disentangled the within-group changes with regard to group composition. This study highlights the importance of assessing carers' benefits in relation to both group composition and size, and of investigating the within-individual plastic response of helper effects.
Data from: Senescence impacts reproduction and maternal investment in bottlenose dolphins
Reproductive senescence is evident across many mammalian species. An emerging perspective considers components of reproductive senescence as evolutionarily distinct phenomena: fertility senescence and maternal-effect senescence. While fertility senescence is regarded as the aging of reproductive physiology, maternal-effect senescence pertains to the declining capacity to provision and rear surviving offspring due to age. Both contribute to reproductive failure in utero making it difficult to differentiate between the two prenatally in the wild. We investigated both components in a long-lived mammal with prolonged maternal care through three parameters: calf survival, interbirth interval (IBI), and lactation period. We provide clear evidence for reproductive senescence in a wild population of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) using 34+ years of longitudinal data on 229 adult females and 562 calves. Calf survival decreased with maternal age, and calves with older mothers had lower survival than predicted by birth order, suggesting maternal-effect senescence. Both lactation period and IBIs increased with maternal age, and IBIs increased regardless of calf mortality, indicating interactions between fertility and maternal-effect senescence. Of calves that survived to weaning, last-born calves weaned later than earlier-born calves, evidence of terminal investment, a mitigating strategy given reduced reproductive value caused by either components of reproductive senescence.
Data from: Cooperative breeding favours maternal investment in size over number of eggs in spiders
The transition to cooperative breeding may alter maternal investment strategies depending on density of breeders, extent of reproductive skew and allo-maternal care. Change in optimal investment from solitary to cooperative breeding can be investigated by comparing social species with non-social congeners. We tested two hypotheses in a mainly semelparous system: that social, cooperative breeders, compared to subsocial, solitarily breeding congeners, 1) lay fewer and larger eggs because larger offspring compete better for limited resources and become reproducers; 2) induce egg size variation within clutches as a bet-hedging strategy to ensure that some offspring become reproducers. Within two spider genera, Anelosimus and Stegodyphus, we compared species from similar habitats and augmented the results with a mini-meta-analysis of egg numbers depicted in phylogenies. We found that social species indeed laid fewer, larger eggs than subsocials, while egg size variation was low overall, giving no support for bet-hedging. We propose that the transition to cooperative breeding selects for producing few, large offspring because reproductive skew and high density of breeders and young create competition for resources and reproduction. Convergent evolution has shaped maternal strategies similarly in phylogenetically distant species and directed cooperatively breeding spiders to invest in quality rather than quantity of offspring.
Data from: On the importance of having a good mother: maternal investment affects duckling mortality risk in wood ducks
Most avian populations experience more variation in recruitment than adult survival, and twhich drives much of the change in population growth rates from year to year. In duck species, the probability of duckling survival is an important component of recruitment into the breeding population. We investigated how variation in maternal investment in offspring by nesting female wood duck Aix sponsa affected duckling mortality (1‐survival) to 60 days of age using capture‐mark‐recapture techniques. Our primary sample consisted of 3,035 ducklings, from 545 nests, that were marked with uniquely coded webtags on the day of hatch over nine nesting seasons (2008‐2016). We also included 4,437 HY and AHY individuals to increase precision on parameter estimates because some ducklings were not recaptured until after fledging. Duckling mortality was greatest during the first week of life (0.76, 85% C.I. 0.71, 0.81) and approached zero by the second week after hatching (0.005, 85% C.I. 0, 0.025). We observed a quadratic effect of hatch date on duckling mortality (βHD = 0.013, 85% CI 0.13, 0.20, βHD2 = 0.12, 85% CI 0.051, 0.017) of hatch date, suggesting that successful females improve fitness by nesting early in the year, but not too early (15 days before mean hatch). Increased egg volume and duckling mass reduced the probability of ducking mortality (βegg volume = ‐0.155, 85% CI ‐0.245, ‐0.075. βduckling mass = ‐7.56, 85% CI ‐10.67,‐4.45). Our results suggest that risk of mortality for ducklings is influenced, at least in part, by maternal effects, which are manifested through energy allocation and behavior during the breeding season. As such, individual heterogeneity among breeding females affects duckling mortality risk and likely the recruitment process for wood ducks.
Data from: Placentation and maternal investment in mammals
The mammalian placenta exhibits striking interspecific morphological variation, yet the implications of such diversity for reproductive strategies and fetal development remain obscure. More invasive hemochorial placentas, in which fetal tissues directly contact the maternal blood supply, are believed to facilitate nutrient transfer, resulting in higher fetal growth rates, and to be a state of relative fetal advantage in the evolution of maternal-offspring conflict. The extent of interdigitation between maternal and fetal tissues has received less attention than invasiveness but is also potentially important because it influences the surface area for exchange. We show that although increased placental invasiveness and interdigitation are both associated with shorter gestations, interdigitation is the key variable. Gestation times associated with highly interdigitated labyrinthine placentas are 44% of those associated with less interdigitated villous and trabecular placentas. There is, however, no relationship between placental traits and neonatal body and brain size. Hence, species with more interdigitated placentas produce neonates of similar body and brain size but in less than half the time. We suggest that the effects of placental interdigitation on growth rates and the way that these are traded off against gestation length may be promising avenues for understanding the evolutionary dynamics of parent-offspring conflict.
Replication package for: "{Maternal Investments in Children: The Role of Expected Effort and Returns}"
<div> <div> <div>This file provides the supplementary replication material of the article "Maternal Investments in Children: The Role of Expected Effort and Returns" by Bhalotra, Delavande, Font-Gilabert and Maselko.</div> <div>ChangeRemove</div> </div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> </div> </div> </div>
Data from: Effects of maternal investment, temperament, and cognition on guide dog success
A continuing debate in studies of social development in both humans and other animals is the extent to which early life experiences affect adult behavior. Also unclear are the relative contributions of cognitive skills ("intelligence") and temperament for successful outcomes. Guide dogs are particularly suited to research on these questions. To succeed as a guide dog, individuals must accomplish complex navigation and decision making without succumbing to distractions and unforeseen obstacles. Faced with these rigorous demands, only ∼70% of dogs that enter training ultimately achieve success. What predicts success as a guide dog? To address these questions, we followed 98 puppies from birth to adulthood. We found that high levels of overall maternal behavior were linked with a higher likelihood of program failure. Furthermore, mothers whose nursing style required greater effort by puppies were more likely to produce successful offspring, whereas mothers whose nursing style required less effort were more likely to produce offspring that failed. In young adults, an inability to solve a multistep task quickly, compounded with high levels of perseveration during the task, was associated with failure. Young adults that were released from the program also appeared more anxious, as indicated by a short latency to vocalize when faced with a novel object task. Our results suggest that both maternal nursing behavior and individual traits of cognition and temperament are associated with guide dog success.
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