ORCID Profile
0000-0001-6728-4851
Current Organisation
James Cook University
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-07-2016
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-09-2006
DOI: 10.1111/J.1365-2656.2006.01155.X
Abstract: 1. Variation in survival, a major determinant of fitness, may be caused by in idual or environmental characteristics. Furthermore, interactions between in iduals may influence survival through the negative feedback effects of density dependence. Compared to species in temperate regions, we have little knowledge about population processes and variation in fitness in tropical bird species. 2. To investigate whether variation in survival could be explained by population size or climatic variables we used capture-recapture models in conjunction with a long-term data set from an island population of the territorial, cooperatively breeding Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis). The lack of migration out of the study population means that our results are not confounded by dispersal. 3. Annual survival was high, both for adults (84%) and juveniles (61%), and did not differ between the sexes. Although there was significant variation in survival between years, this variation could not be explained by overall population size or weather variables. 4. For territorial species, resource competition will work mainly on a local scale. The size of a territory and number of in iduals living in it will therefore be a more appropriate measure of density than overall population density. Consequently, both an index of territory quality per in idual (food availability) and local density, measured as group size, were included as in idual covariates in our analyses. 5. Local density had a negative effect on survival birds living in larger groups had lower survival probabilities than those living in small groups. Food availability did not affect survival. 6. Our study shows that, in a territorial species, although density-dependent effects might not be detectable at the population level they can be detected at the in idual territory level - the scale at which in iduals compete. These results will help to provide a better understanding of the small-scale processes involved in the dynamics of a population in general, but in particular in tropical species living in relatively stable environments.
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Date: 2003
DOI: 10.1071/ZO03034
Abstract: The Australian endemic brown songlark, Cinclorh hus cruralis, is one of the most sexually size-dimorphic of all birds, and yet its breeding ecology remains poorly documented. Here we redress this situation by describing the breeding activities of brown songlarks over three years (1998–2000) in the semi-arid grasslands of south-western New South Wales. Study populations of this nomadic species were selected in late August of each year on the basis of high adult abundance. Adult males at these sites were, on average, 2.3 times heavier than females. Over the three seasons, nesting activities started in early to late August and continued until early November or December. Males were highly polygynous and, on average, occupied territories of about 4.0 ha. Nests were well concealed at the base of small shrubs and grass tussocks or in thick herbage. Clutches ranged in size from 2 to 5 eggs (mean 3.2) and were incubated exclusively by the female for 11–13 days (mean 12.1). Nestlings received a range of invertebrate prey, mainly from the female, for 10–14 days (mean 11.5) before leaving the nest. Only 17% of nesting attempts were estimated to be successful, and each of these nests produced an average of 2.7 fledglings. Predators, including foxes, Vulpes vulpes, and brown snakes, Pseudonaja textilis, were the main cause of nest failure. Some females produced replacement clutches following nest failure, while others laid second clutches after the success of an earlier brood. We speculate that extreme size dimorphism has evolved in this species because (i) males compete physically for breeding territories, and (ii) habitat heterogeneity and excellent visibility of their surroundings allow some males to defend territories of sufficient size to support nesting by multiple females.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 03-2019
DOI: 10.1086/701632
Abstract: The forces shaping female plumage color have long been debated but remain unresolved. Females may benefit from conspicuous colors but are also expected to suffer costs. Predation is one potential cost, but few studies have explicitly investigated the relationship between predation risk and coloration. The fairy-wrens show pronounced variation in female coloration and reside in a wide variety of habitats across Australasia. Species with more conspicuous females are found in denser habitats, suggesting that conspicuousness in open habitat increases vulnerability to predators. To test this, we measured attack rates on 3-D-printed models mimicking conspicuously colored males and females and dull females in eight different fairy-wren habitats across Australia. Attack rates were higher in open habitats and at higher latitudes. Contrary to our predictions, dull female models were attacked at similar rates to the conspicuous models. Further, the probability of attack in open habitats increased more for both types of female models than for the conspicuous male model. Across models, the degree of contrast (chromatic and achromatic) to environmental backgrounds was unrelated to predation rate. These findings do not support the long-standing hypothesis that conspicuous plumage, in isolation, is costly due to increased attraction of predators. Our results indicate that conspicuousness interacts with other factors in driving the evolution of plumage coloration.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 05-2023
Abstract: Climate change affects timing of reproduction in many bird species, but few studies have investigated its influence on annual reproductive output. Here, we assess changes in the annual production of young by female breeders in 201 populations of 104 bird species (N = 745,962 clutches) covering all continents between 1970 and 2019. Overall, average offspring production has declined in recent decades, but considerable differences were found among species and populations. A total of 56.7% of populations showed a declining trend in offspring production (significant in 17.4%), whereas 43.3% exhibited an increase (significant in 10.4%). The results show that climatic changes affect offspring production through compounded effects on ecological and life history traits of species. Migratory and larger-bodied species experienced reduced offspring production with increasing temperatures during the chick-rearing period, whereas smaller-bodied, sedentary species tended to produce more offspring. Likewise, multi-brooded species showed increased breeding success with increasing temperatures, whereas rising temperatures were unrelated to reproductive success in single-brooded species. Our study suggests that rapid declines in size of bird populations reported by many studies from different parts of the world are driven only to a small degree by changes in the production of young.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 15-10-2014
Abstract: Investment in offspring depends on the costs and benefits to the carer, which can vary with sex and social status. Investment also depends on the effort of others by allowing for compensation (load-lightening), with biparental care studies showing that this depends on the state and type of the other carer. By contrast, studies on cooperative breeders have solely focussed on the effects of group size rather than its composition (i.e. social environment). Here we propose and provide the first test of the 'Social Environment' hypothesis, that is, how the characteristics (here the sex) of other helpers present in the group affect parental care and how this in turn affects offspring fitness in cooperatively breeding red-winged fairy-wrens (Malurus elegans). Breeders provisioned nestlings at a higher rate than helpers, but there was no sex difference in provisioning rate. Compensation to increasing group size varied little with sex and status, but strongly depended on social environment. All group members reduced their provisioning rates in response to an increasing number of male (load-lightening), but not female helpers (additive care). As a result, nestlings received more food and grew faster in the presence of female helpers. The increased nestling growth did convey a fitness advantage due to a higher post-fledging survival to adulthood. Our study provides the first evidence that parental care can depend on social environment. This could be an important overlooked aspect to explain variation in parental care in cooperative breeders in general and in particular the enormous variation between the sexes, which we reveal in a literature overview.
Publisher: Netherlands Ornithologists' Union
Date: 10-2009
DOI: 10.5253/078.097.0309
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2005
DOI: 10.1163/156853905774831891
Abstract: Group size has been shown to positively influence survival of group members in many cooperatively breeding vertebrates, including the Lake Tanganyika cichlid Neol rologus pulcher, suggesting Allee effects. However, long-term data are scarce to test how these survival differences translate into changes in group extinction risk, group size and composition. We show in a field study of 117 groups from six different colonies (three from two populations each), that group size critically influences these parameters between years. Within one year, 34% of the groups went extinct. Group size correlated positively between years and large groups did not go extinct. The latter were more likely to contain small helpers the subsequent year, which is a cumulative measure of the previous months' reproductive success. Finally, there was a tendency that large groups were more likely to contain a breeding male and female still a year after the first check. The breeder male size, breeder female size, and largest helper size did not influence these parameters, and also did not correlate with the sizes of these categories of fish after one year. This suggests that group size, and not the body size or fighting ability of group members, was the critical variable determining the success of groups. In total, seven groups had fused with other groups between years. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing long-term benefits of large group size in a cooperatively breeding fish. We discuss the importance of differential survival and dispersal of group members for the demonstrated group size effects.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2010
DOI: 10.1111/J.1558-5646.2009.00859.X
Abstract: Fluctuating and disruptive selection are important mechanisms for maintaining intrapopulation trait variation. Nonetheless, few field studies quantify selection pressures over long periods and identify what causes them to fluctuate. Diet specialists in oystercatchers differ in short-term payoffs (intake), but their long-term payoffs are hypothesized to be condition dependent. We test whether phenotypic selection on diet specialization fluctuates between years due to the frequency of specialists, competitor density, prey abundance, and environmental conditions. Short-term payoffs proved to be poor predictors of long-term fitness payoffs of specialization. Sex-differences in diet specialization were maintained by opposing directional fecundity and viability selection between the sexes. Contrasting other studies, selection on in idual diet specialization was neither negative frequency- or density-dependent nor dependent on prey abundance. Notwithstanding, viability selection fluctuated strongly (stabilizing disruptive) over the 26-year study period: slightly favoring generalists in most years, but strongly disfavoring generalists in rare harsh winters, suggesting generalists cannot cope with extreme conditions. Although selection fluctuated, mean selection on specialists was weak, which can explain how in idual specialization can persist over long periods. Because rare events can dramatically affect long-term selective landscapes, more care should be taken to match the timescale of evolutionary studies to the temporal variability of critical environmental conditions.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 17-04-2017
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-05-2009
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 2008
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 22-11-2004
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-03-2018
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2004
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-07-2007
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 08-05-2017
Abstract: Despite abundant evidence that natural populations are responding to climate change, there are few demonstrations of how extreme climatic events (ECEs) affect fitness. Climate warming increases adverse effects of exposure to high temperatures, but also reduces exposure to cold ECEs. Here, we investigate variation in survival associated with severity of summer and winter conditions, and whether survival is better predicted by ECEs than mean temperatures using data from two coexisting bird species monitored over 37 years in southwestern Australia, red-winged fairy-wrens, Malurus elegans and white-browed scrubwrens, Sericornis frontalis . Changes in survival were associated with temperature extremes more strongly than average temperatures. In scrubwrens, winter ECEs were associated with survival within the same season. In both species, survival was associated with body size, and there was evidence that size-dependent mortality was mediated by carry-over effects of climate in the previous season. For fairy-wrens, mean body size declined over time but this could not be explained by size-dependent mortality as the effects of body size on survival were consistently positive. Our study demonstrates how ECEs can have in idual-level effects on survival that are not reflected in long-term morphological change, and the same climatic conditions can affect similar-sized, coexisting species in different ways. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events’.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 28-09-2016
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 24-06-2008
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2013
DOI: 10.1071/MU12094
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 05-2022
Abstract: In iduals of socially monogamous species can correct for suboptimal partnerships via two secondary mating strategies: orce and extra-pair mating, with the former potentially providing both genetic and social benefits. Divorcing between breeding seasons has been shown to be generally adaptive behaviour across monogamous birds. Interestingly, some pairs also orce during the breeding season, when constraints on finding a new partner are stronger. Despite being important for a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of social monogamy, whether within-season orce is adaptive and how it relates to extra-pair mating remains unknown. Here, we meta-analysed 90 effect sizes on within-season orce and breeding success, extracted from 31 studies on 24 species. We found no evidence that within-season orce is adaptive for breeding success. However, the large heterogeneity of effect sizes and strong phylogenetic signal suggest social and environmental factors—which have rarely been considered in empirical studies—may play an important role in explaining variation among populations and species. Furthermore, we found no evidence that within-season orce and extra-pair mating are complementary strategies. We discuss our findings within the current evidence of the adaptiveness of secondary mating strategies and their interplay that ultimately shapes the evolution of social monogamy.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 06-09-2021
Abstract: Understanding when learning begins is critical for identifying the factors that shape both the developmental course and the function of information acquisition. Until recently, sufficient development of the neural substrates for any sort of vocal learning to begin in songbirds was thought to be reached well after hatching. New research shows that embryonic gene activation and the outcome of vocal learning can be modulated by sound exposure in ovo . We tested whether avian embryos across lineages differ in their auditory response strength and sound learning in ovo , which we studied in vocal learning (Maluridae, Geospizidae) and vocal non-learning (Phasianidae, Spheniscidae) taxa. While measuring heart rate in ovo , we exposed embryos to (i) conspecific or heterospecific vocalizations, to determine their response strength, and (ii) conspecific vocalizations repeatedly, to quantify cardiac habituation, a form of non-associative learning. Response strength towards conspecific vocalizations was greater in two species with vocal production learning compared to two species without. Response patterns consistent with non-associative auditory learning occurred in all species. Our results demonstrate a capacity to perceive and learn to recognize sounds in ovo , as evidenced by habituation, even in species that were previously assumed to have little, if any, vocal production learning. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 11-01-2022
Abstract: Sperm competition is thought to impose strong selection on males to produce competitive ejaculates to outcompete rival males under competitive mating conditions. Our understanding of how different sperm traits influence fertilization success, however, remains limited, especially in wild populations. Recent literature highlights the importance of incorporating multiple ejaculate traits and pre-copulatory sexually selected traits in analyses aimed at understanding how selection acts on sperm traits. However, variation in a male’s ability to gain fertilization success may also depend upon a range of social and ecological factors that determine the opportunity for mating events both within and outside of the social pair-bond. Here, we test for an effect of sperm quantity and sperm size on male reproductive success in the red-back fairy-wren (Malurus melanocephalus) while simultaneously accounting for pre-copulatory sexual selection and potential socio-ecological correlates of male mating success. We found that sperm number (i.e., cloacal protuberance volume), but not sperm morphology, was associated with reproductive success in male red-backed fairy-wrens. Most notably, males with large numbers of sperm available for copulation achieved greater within-pair paternity success. Our results suggest that males use large sperm numbers as a defensive strategy to guard within-pair paternity success in a system where there is a high risk of sperm competition and female control of copulation. Finally, our work highlights the importance of accounting for socio-ecological factors that may influence male mating opportunities when examining the role of sperm traits in determining male reproductive success.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 03-2020
Abstract: The paradox of cooperative breeding, whereby in iduals assist others instead of reproducing independently, is generally explained through ecological constraints, but experimental evidence is scant. Here we performed the crucial test of the role of habitat saturation through the experimental creation of vacancies and found that, despite abundant presence of potential mates, subordinates are reluctant to disperse into suitable vacant habitat where conspecifics are absent. We argue that sudden disappearance of multiple group members might indicate a heightened risk of predation. Thereby the results of this study are consistent with the ‘perceptual trap’ hypothesis: the avoidance of habitats because cues do not accurately reflect their quality. Interestingly, this hypothesis can also explain previous findings, which were widely interpreted as evidence for ecological constraints as a driver of cooperative breeding. Our results can have considerable implications for conservation as they mean that opportunities for colonization might go unexploited.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 24-01-2013
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2009
DOI: 10.1890/07-1437.1
Abstract: Temporal variation in survival, fecundity, and dispersal rates is associated with density‐dependent and density‐independent processes. Stable natural populations are expected to be regulated by density‐dependent factors. However, detecting this by investigating natural variation in density is difficult because density‐dependent and independent factors affecting population dynamics may covary. Therefore, experiments are needed to assess the density dependence of demographic rates. In this study, we investigate the effect of density on demographic rates of the Seychelles Warbler ( Acrocephalus sechellensis ). This species, endemic to a few islands in the Indian Ocean, went through a severe population bottleneck in the middle of the last century, with only ∼30 in iduals left on one small island, but has since recovered. Our monitoring shows that since reaching the island's carrying capacity, population density has remained stable. However, we detected neither density‐dependent reproduction nor survival on the basis of natural density variation during this stable period. For conservation reasons, new populations have been established by transferring birds to nearby suitable islands. Using the change of numbers during the process of saturation as a natural experiment, we investigated whether we can detect regulation of numbers via density‐dependent survival and reproduction within these new populations. We found that populations were mainly regulated by density‐dependent reproduction, and not survival. Variation in density between islands can be explained by food abundance, measured as insect density. Islands with the highest insect densities also had the highest bird densities and the largest breeding groups. Consequently, we suggest that the density‐dependent effect on reproduction is caused by competition for food.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2008
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-02-2019
DOI: 10.1111/EVO.13684
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-07-2010
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 19-10-2011
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 02-2020
DOI: 10.1086/706475
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 04-04-2012
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 07-01-2016
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2010
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-06-2010
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 2014
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-08-2021
Abstract: Biological processes exhibit complex temporal dependencies due to the sequential nature of allocation decisions in organisms' life cycles, feedback loops and two‐way causality. Consequently, longitudinal data often contain cross‐lags: the predictor variable depends on the response variable of the previous time step. Although statisticians have warned that regression models that ignore such covariate endogeneity in time series are likely to be inappropriate, this has received relatively little attention in biology. Furthermore, the resulting degree of estimation bias remains largely unexplored. We use a graphical model and numerical simulations to understand why and how regression models that ignore cross‐lags can be biased, and how this bias depends on the length and number of time series. Ecological and evolutionary ex les are provided to illustrate that cross‐lags may be more common than is typically appreciated and that they occur in functionally different ways. We show that routinely used regression models that ignore cross‐lags are asymptotically unbiased. However, this offers little relief, as for most realistically feasible lengths of time‐series conventional methods are biased. Furthermore, collecting time series on multiple subjects—such as populations, groups or in iduals—does not help to overcome this bias when the analysis focusses on within‐subject patterns (often the pattern of interest). Simulations, a literature search and a real‐world empirical ex le together suggest that approaches that ignore cross‐lags are likely biased in the direction opposite to the sign of the cross‐lag (e.g. towards detecting density dependence of vital rates and against detecting life‐history trade‐offs and benefits of group living). Next, we show that multivariate (e.g. structural equation) models can dynamically account for cross‐lags, and simultaneously address additional bias induced by measurement error, but only if the analysis considers multiple time series. We provide guidance on how to identify a cross‐lag and subsequently specify it in a multivariate model, which can be far from trivial. Our tutorials with data and R code of the worked ex les provide step‐by‐step instructions on how to perform such analyses. Our study offers insights into situations in which cross‐lags can bias analysis of ecological and evolutionary time series and suggests that adopting dynamical models can be important, as this directly affects our understanding of population regulation, the evolution of life histories and cooperation, and possibly many other topics. Determining how strong estimation bias due to ignoring covariate endogeneity has been in the ecological literature requires further study, also because it may interact with other sources of bias.
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2017
DOI: 10.1163/1568539X-00003428
Abstract: Rescue behaviour is a special form of cooperation in which a rescuer exhibits behaviours directed towards averting a threat to an endangered in idual, thereby potentially putting itself at risk. Although rescue behaviour has been well-documented in experimental studies on rats and ants, published cases in other non-human animals are rare. Here, we report observations of rescue behaviour in the cooperatively breeding Seychelles warbler ( Acrocephalus sechellensis ). In this species, in iduals sometimes become entangled in seed clusters of ‘bird-catcher trees’ ( Pisonia grandis ). Just one or a few of these sticky seeds can prevent Seychelles warblers to fly and may lead to mortality. In four cases, in iduals were observed displaying behaviour aimed at removing sticky seeds from the feathers of an entangled in idual belonging to their group. Intriguingly, the rescuing in iduals engaged in this behaviour despite potentially risking entanglement. To our knowledge, this is the first recorded case of rescue behaviour in birds.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-2022
DOI: 10.1007/S00265-022-03221-6
Abstract: Females should facultatively bias offspring sex ratio when fitness returns vary among sexes. In cooperative breeders, where in iduals help raise others’ young, overproducing the philopatric sex will be adaptive when helpers are absent, whereas overproducing the dispersive sex may be adaptive to reduce intrasexual competition. Thus, fitness returns are expected to vary with the social environment. However, any offspring sex-ratio biases may also result from consistent among-female differences (e.g. quality) and/or environmental variables (e.g. food availability). Yet, few studies have disentangled facultative from persistent biases. We investigated offspring sex-ratio biases in relation to the social environment in cooperatively breeding red-winged fairy-wrens ( Malurus elegans ). Repeated observations of the same females over nine years allowed for disentanglement of facultative from persistent biases. Females without help did not overproduce daughters, despite female helpers being associated with higher fledgling survival (resource enhancement hypothesis). Instead, females without helpers facultatively overproduced sons —the slower dispersing sex— thereby ensuring long-term helper availability. Furthermore, offspring sex ratio was not biased towards the rarer sex of helpers present in the group or population (resource competition hypothesis). However, females with sex-biased helping produced similarly skewed offspring sex ratios. This among-female association may not be surprising, because helpers are previous seasons’ offspring. Thus, in addition to facultative responses to prevailing social conditions, we found evidence for persistent biases among females. This could potentially explain previous evidence for resource competition/enhancement that have typically been interpreted as facultative responses, highlighting the need for a within-female approach to better understand the adaptiveness of sex-ratio biases. Under certain conditions, females may benefit from producing a biased offspring sex ratio, but evidence for such effects in vertebrates is weak and inconsistent. Here, using observations of the same females under different social conditions, we show that cooperatively breeding red-winged fairy-wrens facultatively biased offspring sex ratio towards sons when living in pairs, thereby ensuring the availability of a workforce to assist in raising future offspring. However, biased offspring sex ratio patterns may also be the result of consistent differences among females. Indeed, we also found evidence for such patterns and suggest that this could be an explanation for previous findings which are often interpreted as facultative responses.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-11-2017
DOI: 10.1111/MEC.14385
Abstract: Extra-pair paternity (EPP), where offspring are sired by a male other than the social male, varies enormously both within and among species. Trying to explain this variation has proved difficult because the majority of the interspecific variation is phylogenetically based. Ideally, variation in EPP should be investigated in closely related species, but clades with sufficient variation are rare. We present a comprehensive multifactorial test to explain variation in EPP among in iduals in 20 populations of nine species over 89 years from a single bird family (Maluridae). Females had higher EPP in the presence of more helpers, more neighbours or if paired incestuously. Furthermore, higher EPP occurred in years with many incestuous pairs, populations with many helpers and species with high male density or in which males provide less care. Altogether, these variables accounted for 48% of the total and 89% of the interspecific and interpopulation variation in EPP. These findings indicate why consistent patterns in EPP have been so challenging to detect and suggest that a single predictor is unlikely to account for the enormous variation in EPP across levels of analysis. Nevertheless, it also shows that existing hypotheses can explain the variation in EPP well and that the density of males in particular is a good predictor to explain variation in EPP among species when a large part of the confounding effect of phylogeny is excluded.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 10-2008
DOI: 10.1093/JXB/ERN238
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 30-11-2020
Abstract: Many ecological and evolutionary processes strongly depend on the way natural selection varies over time. However, a gap remains when trying to connect theoretical predictions to empirical work on this question: Most theory assumes that adaptation involves tracking a moving optimum phenotype through time, but this is seldom estimated empirically. Here, we have assembled a large database of wild bird and mammal populations, to estimate patterns of fluctuations in the optimum breeding date and its influence on the variability of natural selection. We find that optimum fluctuations are prevalent. However, their influence on temporal variance in natural selection is partly buffered by tracking of the optimum phenotype through in idual phenotypic plasticity.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-04-2021
Abstract: Assignment of parentage with molecular markers is most difficult when the true parents have close relatives in the adult population. Here, we present an efficient solution to that problem by extending simple exclusion approaches to parentage analysis with single nucleotide polymorphic markers (SNPs). We augmented the previously published homozygote opposite test ( hot ), which counts mismatches due to the offspring and candidate parent having different homozygous genotypes, with an additional test. In this case, parents homozygous for the same SNP are incompatible with heterozygous offspring (i.e., “ H omozygous I dentical P arents, H eterozygous O ffspring are P recluded”: hiphop ). We tested this approach in a cooperatively breeding bird, the superb fairy‐wren, Malurus cyaneus , where rates of extra‐pair paternity are exceptionally high, and where paternity assignment is challenging because breeding males typically have first‐order adult relatives in their neighbourhood. Combining the tests and conditioning on the maternal genotype with a set of 1376 autosomal SNPs always allowed us to distinguish a single most likely sire from his relatives, and also to identify cases where the true sire must have been uns led. In contrast, if just the hot test was used, we failed to identify a single most‐likely sire in 2.5% of cases. Res ling enabled us to create guidelines for the number of SNPs required when first‐order relatives coexist in the mating pool. Our method, implemented in the R package hiphop , therefore provides unambiguous parentage assignments even in systems with complex social organisation. We also identified a suite of Z‐ and W‐linked SNPs that always identified sex correctly.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2018
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-2003
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 23-10-2009
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 22-06-2007
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 23-03-2005
Location: Netherlands
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Lyanne Brouwer.