A trade-off between current and future sex allocation revealed by maternal energy budget in a small mammal

Rutkowska, Joanna; Koskela, Esa; Mappes, Johanna; Speakman, John R.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.2654

Cited by 24 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 55 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…An animal's field metabolic rate, or daily energy expenditure (DEE), measures the total energy individuals spend under differing environmental and physiological conditions. An individual's survival (Zub et al, 2011) and reproduction (Rutkowska et al, 2011;Speakman, 2008) depend on the balance between energy input and output, and so examining differences in DEE between populations of declining species, and how this is affected by environmental factors, may reveal which environmental factors are particularly contributing to that species' decline.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Daily energy expenditure in the face of predation: hedgehog energetics in rural landscapes

Pettett

Johnson

Moorhouse

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Biology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Failure to balance daily energy expenditure (DEE) with energy intake can have an impact on survival and reproduction, and therefore on the persistence of populations. Here we study the DEE of the European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), which is declining in the UK. We hypothesise that there is a gradient of suitable habitat for hedgehogs in rural areas, which is a result of fewer food resources, a higher risk from predation by badgers (Meles meles) and colder ambient temperatures, as distance to the nearest building increases. We used the doubly labelled water method to obtain 44 measurements of DEE from hedgehogs on four predominately arable sites, to determine the energetic costs associated with proximity to buildings, on sites with and without badgers. The mean±s.e.m. DEE was 508.9±34.8 kJ day . DEE increased the further a hedgehog was from buildings during the study, possibly as they ranged larger distances on arable land, supporting the hypothesis that hedgehogs select villages owing to the lower energy demands in comparison to arable farmland. Hedgehogs had an approximately 30% lower DEE on sites with badgers. We speculate that on badger-occupied sites, hedgehogs may restrict movement and foraging in response to a threat from predation and thus have reduced DEE. Therefore, hedgehogs may also seek refuge in villages where the perceived threat of predation is lower and foraging is unrestricted. In a broader context, we demonstrate that individual differences in DEE can aid in understanding habitat selection in a patchily distributed species.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Daily energy expenditure in the face of predation: hedgehog energetics in rural landscapes

Pettett

Johnson

Moorhouse

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Biology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the Kruger National Park, which has a similar environment to that of Hwange, Plains zebras have a clear birth peak in the wet season (Smuts, 1976): a longer inter-foal interval after a dry season birth could be a mechanism leading to more frequent foaling in the wet season, we therefore expected to find longer intervals after foals born in the dry season in our population. Finally, intervals should be longer after giving birth to a male foal, as males are generally more costly to raise in mammals (Bercovitch et al, 2000;Fernàndez-Llario et al, 1999;Rutkowska et al, 2011) including horses (Duncan et al, 1984;Cameron and Linklater, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inter-birth interval in zebras is longer following the birth of male foals than after female foals

Barnier¹,

Grange²,

Ganswindt³

et al. 2012

Acta Oecologica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mammalian reproductive rates vary among individuals for physiological and environmental reasons. This study aims to determine reproductive rates from an individually monitored population of wild Plains zebras Equus quagga, and to assess the sources of variability in inter-birth intervals. The animals were monitored, where possible, every six months from 2004 to 2011. Thirty nine intervals corresponding to 65 births in 26 mares were identified, using direct observations and faecal steroid monitoring. Mean foaling rate of the population is 0.74 foal/year, and comparable with the literature. There was no significant effect of mother's 2 age, nor of the season of previous birth on the length of inter-birth intervals. Inter-birth interval was significantly longer when the first foal was a male. This finding indicates that additional costs of having a son may delay future reproduction and thus reduce the total number of offspring a mare can have during her lifetime. Individually-based data provide critical information on the determinants of reproductive rates, and are therefore a key to understanding the causes of variations in life-history traits.

show abstract

“…If the Trivers-Willard effect is operating and parents produce the sex ratios according to their (current) investment abilities, parents that originally produced male-biased sex ratios are expected to produce heavier and fast growing offspring, but those that gave birth to female-biased sex ratios should not be able to do so (Bowers et al 2013). There have been only a handful of such experiments, and only two using mammals, which both supported the TWH (Bowers et al 2013, Robert et al 2010, Rutkowska et al 2011.…”

Section: General Field Methods: Individual Identification and Measurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies on other small mammals support this. In rodents, for example, lactating mothers increase their food intake rate when their provisioning demands were increased by both rearing enlarged litters (Kunkele 2000, Rutkowska et al 2011) and male-biased litters (Rutkowska et al 2011). Increased food intake rate is a plausible explanation for this phenomenon and, because during the captivity time, females had access to ad lib food daily, I was expecting to observe some weight changes.…”

Section: Costs To Mothers Are Predominantly Inconsistent With the Twhmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Offspring growth in mammals during lactation depends on maternal provisioning, including lactating performance, and other environmental factors such as litter size, as each young's share of milk is reduced with increasing number of littermates (Rödel et al 2008a, Rutkowska et al 2011. Sibling competition, either by interference or scramble competition, seems to be common among littermates, and to increase with litter size (Hudson & Trillmich 2008).…”

Section: Trade-offs Between Growth and Survival During Lactation In Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Sex allocation, terminal investment and the effects of environmental constraints on maternal investment in subtropical antechinus

Faundes¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

School of Biological Sciences iiCover photo: Female subtropical antechinus named Olive, born in 2012, hand-reared by Daniela Parra-Faundes and released back to the wild on mid-January 2013. This picture was taken three weeks after she was released. Photo: Daniela Parra-Faundes iii AbstractThis thesis addresses questions on sex allocation, life history strategies and costs of reproduction using experimental manipulations of litter sex ratios and field data on ecology and behaviour of the subtropical antechinus (Antechinus subtropicus).In chapter 2, I investigate two major adaptive hypotheses to explain sex ratio bias at birth: the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis (TWH) and the Local Resource Competition Hypothesis (LRCH). I show that sons are more costly to produce than daughters because they have fast growth rates and there are greater survival costs to mothers when they wean more sons. Mothers that naturally produced male-biased litters were slightly heavier than mothers that gave birth to female-biased litters. These results are consistent with the TWH, which states that mothers with more resources to invest benefit by producing high quality competitive sons that will reproduce. However, after increasing the natural bias of litter sex ratios, mothers were able to increase investment to meet demands of rearing more sons than they had naturally produced, without compromising offspring growth.These results are inconsistent with a key prediction of the TWH, that females give birth to the number of sons that they can afford to raise. Also inconsistent with the TWH, malebiased litters grew more quickly after the sex ratio manipulation and, were more likely to survive to weaning. The LRCH predicts that mothers in poor condition should reduce competition from the sex that competes the most, by allocating more to sons than to daughters, as females often remain in their natal home range after weaning. In support of the LRCH, large litter size was associated with slower growth rate in daughters, but not sons. These results differ from previous cross fostering manipulations to test sex allocation in mammals, which have unequivocally supported the TWH.In chapter 3 I examine changes in reproductive performance and survival with age in females. Senescence and terminal investment are two major models to understand effects of age on reproduction. Reproductive investment and success declines with age if senescence occurs, and investment in young increases near the end of life if terminal investment occurs, improving offspring performance at a cost to mothers. I show that older subtropical antechinuses females are not reproductively senescent. On the contrary, females had a greater investment ability and an overall improvement in reproductive performance with age. Older mothers increased investment in their second litters, and were able to produce high quality, large, fast growing offspring that were also more likely iv to survive that the offspring from younger females. However, this greater maternal reduced their own survival. These...

show abstract

A trade-off between current and future sex allocation revealed by maternal energy budget in a small mammal

Cited by 24 publications

References 55 publications

Daily energy expenditure in the face of predation: hedgehog energetics in rural landscapes

Daily energy expenditure in the face of predation: hedgehog energetics in rural landscapes

Inter-birth interval in zebras is longer following the birth of male foals than after female foals

Sex allocation, terminal investment and the effects of environmental constraints on maternal investment in subtropical antechinus

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About