Maternal Effects in Wild Ungulates

Wilson, Alastair J.; Festa‐Bianchet, Marco

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226501222.003.0005

Cited by 10 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Maternal effects in mammals are well described from a variance components perspective in both captive (Rutledge et al 1972;Wilson and Reale 2006) and natural populations (Wilson et al 2005;Mcadam 2009;Wilson and Festa-Bianchet 2009). These studies have shown that they are often one of the largest components of variation for traits expressed early in life, with effects generally eroding after weaning (see Wilson and Festa-Bianchet 2009 for a review of persistence), but often persisting at a low level into adulthood (e.g., Riska et al 1984Riska et al , 1985Cowley et al 1989;Jarvis et al 2005;Casellas et al 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies have shown that they are often one of the largest components of variation for traits expressed early in life, with effects generally eroding after weaning (see Wilson and Festa-Bianchet 2009 for a review of persistence), but often persisting at a low level into adulthood (e.g., Riska et al 1984Riska et al , 1985Cowley et al 1989;Jarvis et al 2005;Casellas et al 2009). It is important to keep in mind that most of our understanding of maternal effects has come from studies that used approaches that cannot differentiate between genetic-and environmentally based maternal effects (but exceptions exist; e.g., Wilson …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disentangling Prenatal and Postnatal Maternal Genetic Effects Reveals Persistent Prenatal Effects on Offspring Growth in Mice

et al. 2011

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Mothers are often the most important determinant of traits expressed by their offspring. These "maternal effects" (MEs) are especially crucial in early development, but can also persist into adulthood. They have been shown to play a role in a diversity of evolutionary and ecological processes, especially when genetically based. Although the importance of MEs is becoming widely appreciated, we know little about their underlying genetic basis. We address the dearth of genetic data by providing a simple approach, using combined genotype information from parents and offspring, to identify "maternal genetic effects" (MGEs) contributing to natural variation in complex traits. Combined with experimental cross-fostering, our approach also allows for the separation of pre-and postnatal MGEs, providing rare insights into prenatal effects. Applying this approach to an experimental mouse population, we identified 13 ME loci affecting body weight, most of which (12/13) exhibited prenatal effects, and nearly half (6/13) exhibiting postnatal effects. MGEs contributed more to variation in body weight than the direct effects of the offsprings' own genotypes until mice reached adulthood, but continued to represent a major component of variation through adulthood. Prenatal effects always contributed more variation than postnatal effects, especially for those effects that persisted into adulthood. These results suggest that MGEs may be an important component of genetic architecture that is generally overlooked in studies focused on direct mapping from genotype to phenotype. Our approach can be used in both experimental and natural populations, providing a widely practicable means of expanding our understanding of MGEs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling Prenatal and Postnatal Maternal Genetic Effects Reveals Persistent Prenatal Effects on Offspring Growth in Mice

et al. 2011

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“…During periods of high energetic demands, such as late gestation and early lactation (Oftedal 1984;White and Luick 1984), maternal traits may have stronger effects on offspring development than at other times. Maternal effects should be stronger at birth and during growth, and usually weaken with offspring age (Wilson and Festa-Bianchet 2009). In temperate and arctic environments, parturition usually occurs just before spring green-up (Côté and FestaBianchet 2001;Post et al 2003), and females partly rely on body reserves to provide maternal care (Crête and Huot 1993;Barboza and Parker 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is mother condition related to offspring condition in migratory caribou (Rangifer tarandus) at calving and weaning?

et al. 2012

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Maternal characteristics can affect offspring traits, yet they are seldom included when considering density dependence of juvenile traits and population dynamics. We quantified the influence of population size and maternal traits on body condition of migratory caribou (Rangifer tarandus (L., 1758)) calves at birth and weaning. We contrasted female-calf pairs of the Rivière-George (RG) herd, which has recently declined to low population size, with pairs of the much larger Rivière-aux-Feuilles (RAF) herd. Calves of the RAF herd were lighter, smaller, and leaner than calves of the RG herd at both birth and weaning. Differences between herds, however, were much greater at weaning than at calving, suggesting a combined effect of herd size and summer range conditions on calf growth. Maternal mass was positively related to calf body condition during both periods. The positive influence of maternal mass on calf body condition was greater for RAF than RG calves at birth, but it was similar for the two herds at weaning. Our results show that the negative effect of population size on calf body condition can be modulated by maternal mass at calving, and that the positive effect of maternal mass is greater at weaning.Résumé : Les caractéristiques maternelles peuvent influencer les traits de leur progéniture, mais sont rarement considérées lors de l'étude des effets de la densité sur les traits des juvéniles et la dynamique des populations. Nous avons évalué l'influence de la taille de population et des caractéristiques maternelles sur la condition physique des faons du caribou migrateur (Rangifer tarandus (L., 1758)) à la mise bas et au sevrage. Nous avons comparé des paires de femelle-faon du troupeau Rivière-George (RG) dont la taille de population a récemment décliné, à des paires du troupeau Rivière-aux-Feuilles (RAF) qui est présentement à taille de population élevée. Les faons du RAF présentaient une masse corporelle, une taille corporelle et un indice de gras des reins inférieurs aux faons du RG tant à la mise bas qu'au sevrage. Ces différences entre les troupeaux étaient plus importantes au sevrage qu'à la mise bas, suggérant un effet négatif combiné de la taille de population et des conditions d'alimentation estivale sur la croissance des faons. La masse maternelle était positivement corrélée à la masse des faons et ce, aux deux périodes. L'influence positive de la masse maternelle sur la masse du faon était plus forte pour le RAF que pour le RG à la naissance, mais semblable pour les deux troupeaux au sevrage. Nos résultats indiquent que l'effet négatif d'une taille de population élevée sur la condition corporelle des faons peut être modulé par la masse maternelle à la mise bas, et que cet effet positif de la masse maternelle est plus important au sevrage qu'à la mise bas.

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“…For example, approaches that rely on asymmetrical patterns of resemblance of relatives in crossing schemes (e.g., Kever and Rotman 1987;Jarvis et al 2005) cannot directly differentiate maternal effects from other potential causes of asymmetry, such as genomic imprinting or uniparental inheritance such as cytoplasmic or sex chromosome inheritance (Wolf and Wade 2009). Other approaches, such as experimental cross-fostering (Bateman 1954;Cox et al 1959;White et al 1968), can detect maternal effects but cannot differentiate between maternal genetic and environmental sources unless a more complex design using related mothers is followed (Wilson et al 2005;Wilson and Festa-Bianchet 2009).More recently, genomic mapping approaches have been implemented to identify maternal genetic effects by mapping from the maternal genotype to offspring phenotypes. For example, Wolf et al (2002) used means of cross-fostered litters to identify maternal effects and Casellas et al (2009) mapped maternal effects in small chromosomal blocks in subcongenic mice by mapping maternal genotype to offspring phenotype using an unspecified linear model.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Detecting Maternal-Effect Loci by Statistical Cross-Fostering

Wolf

Cheverud

2012

Genetics

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Great progress has been made in understanding the genetic architecture of phenotypic variation, but it is almost entirely focused on how the genotype of an individual affects the phenotype of that same individual. However, in many species the genotype of the mother is a major determinant of the phenotype of her offspring. Therefore, a complete picture of genetic architecture must include these maternal genetic effects, but they can be difficult to identify because maternal and offspring genotypes are correlated and therefore, partially confounded. We present a conceptual framework that overcomes this challenge to separate direct and maternal effects in intact families through an analysis that we call "statistical cross-fostering." Our approach combines genotype data from mothers and their offspring to remove the confounding effects of the offspring's own genotype on measures of maternal genetic effects. We formalize our approach in an orthogonal model and apply this model to an experimental population of mice. We identify a set of six maternal genetic effect loci that explain a substantial portion of variation in body size at all ages. This variation would be missed in an approach focused solely on direct genetic effects, but is clearly a major component of genetic architecture. Our approach can easily be adapted to examine maternal effects in different systems, and because it does not require experimental manipulation, it provides a framework that can be used to understand the contribution of maternal genetic effects in both natural and experimental populations. MATERNAL effects occur when mothers have an indirect causal influence on the expression of traits in their offspring independent of genes passed from mothers to offspring (see Cheverud and Wolf 2009;Wolf and Wade 2009). These maternal effects, which arise from a diversity of factors such as maternally derived mRNA (Berleth et al. 1988), maternal provisioning (Bowen 2009), and maternally determined dispersal (Donohue 1998), have been shown to have important influences on offspring development across a diversity of taxa (Mousseau and Fox 1998;Maestripieri and Mateo 2009). The importance of maternal effects in evolution and ecology has become more broadly recognized (Mousseau and Fox 1998), where maternal effects have been shown to play a role in the evolutionary response to selection (see Kirkpatrick and Lande 1989), mate choice and sexual selection (Wolf et al. , 1999, adaptive evolution (e.g., Badyaev et al. 2002), dynamics of population size (Ginzburg 1998), and niche construction (Odling-Smee et al. 2003). Genetically based maternal effects ("maternal genetic effects") are of particular importance to many processes because they contribute to the genetic architecture of traits and can, as a result, contribute in nonintuitive ways to evolutionary change (Kirkpatrick and Lande 1989;Cheverud and Wolf 2009). For example, maternal genetic effects can contribute "hidden" variation that can allow for rapid evolution (e.g., Badyaev et al. 2002) and ca...

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Maternal Effects in Wild Ungulates

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Disentangling Prenatal and Postnatal Maternal Genetic Effects Reveals Persistent Prenatal Effects on Offspring Growth in Mice

Disentangling Prenatal and Postnatal Maternal Genetic Effects Reveals Persistent Prenatal Effects on Offspring Growth in Mice

Is mother condition related to offspring condition in migratory caribou (Rangifer tarandus) at calving and weaning?

Detecting Maternal-Effect Loci by Statistical Cross-Fostering

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