Constraints on the Origin and Maintenance of Genetic Kin Recognition

Rousset, François; Roze, Denis

doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.2007.00191.x

Cited by 153 publications

(233 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(64 reference statements)

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“…A probable explanation is that M. nigrophthalmus females cannot assess their relatedness to individual larvae. Kin recognition systems in social insects tend to involve recognizing nest-mates [28], but there is little evidence that individuals can directly estimate their relatedness to individual nestmates [29,30]. It seems more likely that females simply care for all brood in the nest because their mean relatedness to the brood is sufficiently high to make caring advantageous.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assured fitness returns in a social wasp with no worker caste

Lucas

Field

2011

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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The theory of assured fitness returns proposes that individuals nesting in groups gain fitness benefits from effort expended in brood-rearing, even if they die before the young that they have raised reach independence. These benefits, however, require that surviving nest-mates take up the task of rearing these young. It has been suggested that assured fitness returns could have favoured group nesting even at the origin of sociality (that is, in species without a dedicated worker caste). We show that experimentally orphaned brood of the apoid wasp Microstigmus nigrophthalmus continue to be provisioned by surviving adults for at least two weeks after the orphaning. This was the case for brood of both sexes. There was no evidence that naturally orphaned offspring received less food than those that still had mothers in the nest. Assured fitness returns can therefore represent a real benefit to nesting in groups, even in species without a dedicated worker caste.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assured fitness returns in a social wasp with no worker caste

Lucas

Field

2011

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…Instances of Btrue^kin recognition-the ability to recognize genetic relatives even without prior experience-have been notoriously difficult to demonstrate (Grafen 1990;Rousset and Roze 2007). However, several recent studies have re-opened the possibility of true kin recognition by showing that olfactory cues, probably encoded by genes in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), can be used to discriminate between kin and non-kin without previous association (Todrank and Heth 2003;Krause et al 2012;Leclaire et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social living without kin discrimination: experimental evidence from a communally breeding bird

Riehl

Strong

2015

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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In many cooperative animal societies, individuals can recognize their relatives and preferentially direct helping behaviors towards them. However, the ability to learn kin recognition cues may be constrained in societies with low relatedness, since group membership alone is not a reliable proxy for kinship. Here, we examine kin discrimination in the greater ani (Crotophaga major), a communally nesting bird in which several unrelated males and females reproduce in a single, shared nest and provide parental care to the mixed clutch of young. Each adult, therefore, is closely related to some nestlings in the clutch and unrelated to others. Food is limited and starvation is a significant cause of nestling mortality, suggesting that adults should increase their fitness by preferentially feeding their own offspring in the mixed clutch. To test this hypothesis, we cross-fostered broods of nestlings between pairs of nests, such that none of the nestlings in the manipulated nests were related to any of the adults feeding them. We found no evidence that adult greater anis discriminate between their own and unrelated nestlings: adults at cross-fostered groups fed nestlings at the same rates as adults at control (sham-manipulated) nests, and rates of nestling starvation were equal at cross-fostered and control nests. These results suggest that adult greater anis do not recognize their own nestlings, and they are consistent with the hypothesis that genetically encoded markers for kin recognition are rare in birds.

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“…As highlighted in recent reviews [30][31][32][33], recognition systems that are encoded by special kin-recognition genes may not be evolutionarily stable. Recognition systems based on single genetic markers may lead individuals to falsely recognize non-kin with which they share alleles and to fail to recognize kin that bear different alleles [2,32,33].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social discrimination by quantitative assessment of immunogenetic similarity

Villinger

Waldman

2012

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) that underlie the adaptive immune system may allow vertebrates to recognize their kin. True kin-recognition genes should produce signalling products to which organisms can respond. Allelic variation in the peptide-binding region (PBR) of MHC molecules determines the pool of peptides that can be presented to trigger an immune response. To examine whether these MHC peptides also might underlie assessments of genetic similarity, we tested whether Xenopus laevis tadpoles socially discriminate between pairs of siblings with which they differed in PBR amino acid sequences. We found that tadpoles (four sibships, n ¼ 854) associated preferentially with siblings with which they were more similar in PBR amino acid sequence. Moreover, the strength of their preference for a conspecific was directly proportional to the sequence similarity between them. Discrimination was graded, and correlated more closely with functional sequence differences encoded by MHC class I and class II alleles than with numbers of shared haplotypes. Our results thus suggest that haplotype analyses may fail to reveal fine-scale behavioural responses to divergence in functionally expressed sequences. We conclude that MHC -PBR gene products mediate quantitative social assessment of immunogenetic similarity that may facilitate kin recognition in vertebrates.

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Constraints on the Origin and Maintenance of Genetic Kin Recognition

Cited by 153 publications

References 53 publications

Assured fitness returns in a social wasp with no worker caste

Assured fitness returns in a social wasp with no worker caste

Social living without kin discrimination: experimental evidence from a communally breeding bird

Social discrimination by quantitative assessment of immunogenetic similarity

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