Maternal egg hormones in the mating context: The effect of pair personality

Abstract

Abstract1. Animal personality traits emerge developmentally from the interaction of genetic and early environmental factors. Maternal hormones, such as androgens (testosterone, T and androstenedione, A4), transferred to embryos and egg yolks may simultaneously organize multiple behavioural and physiological traits. Although previous studies demonstrated an association between the mother's personality and yolk androgen levels, the independent effects of the male partner's personality and pair combination remains unknown.2. We test this association using an ecological model species for personality research, the great tit (Parus major) using multiple approaches: (1) a wild population, (2) a randomly mated captive population and (3) an experimental study with (dis)assortatively mated pairs from lines selected for fast exploration/boldness or slow exploration/shyness.3. Egg androgen concentrations were associated with variation in female personality traits, and the experimental data suggested that this is independent of male personality: Experimental females from the slow-shy line tended to have higher egg T concentrations than females from the fast-bold line, with no effect of male personality. Shy females from the wild population had higher egg A4 concentration than bold females. However, in the correlative data yolk hormones were linked with male personality, as well as the interaction between female and male traits: Male handling responsiveness correlated negatively with egg A4 concentration in wild birds. In randomly mated birds, pairs that were mated assortatively for personality had lower egg T concentrations than disassortatively mated pairs.4. Given that egg androgens are known mediators of avian personality, our results suggest that maternal hormones might contribute to the heritability of personality, may be sensitive to the social context of mating, and act as key drivers of individual differences. K E Y W O R D Savian, behavioural syndrome, maternal effects, Parus major, plasticity, testosteroneThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Female variation in allocation of steroid hormones, antioxidants and fatty acids: a multilevel analysis in a wild passerine bird

“…body condition; Supplementary materials Appendix 1 Table A4), environmental conditions (e.g. mean ambient temperature; Table 1), consistent individual differences between females (‘personality’; Ruuskanen et al ), and social factors, such as territory quality and male condition or personality (Remeš , Ruuskanen et al ), which all may influence female yolk allocation. In addition, opposing population trends could also be explained by different patterns of individual female plasticity.…”

“…Data available from the Mendeley Data Repository: <https://doi.org/10.17632/2f6f7w87tg.1> (Mentesana et al ).…”

“…Steroid hormones such as androgens and glucocorticoids can enhance offspring growth, competitive ability and survival, while also possibly causing immunosuppression and oxidative stress (Schwabl , Groothuis and Schwabl , 2008, Groothuis et al , Gil , Haussmann et al , Treidel et al ). Conversely, antioxidants like the carotenoids and vitamin E can enhance the immune system and mitigate oxidative stress caused by embryo growth (Surai , Saino et al , Yigit et al , Parolini et al , Watson et al ). Fatty acids, in turn, provide the avian embryo with almost all the energy and building blocks required to sustain development within the egg (Noble and Cocchi , Surai and Speake ).…”

Personality and gonadal development as sources of individual variation in response to GnRH challenge in female great tits

“…Glucocorticoids, for example, tend to fluctuate less in response to a stressor in bold than in shy individuals [65 -67], but see [35]. While another steroid, testosterone, was also shown to differ between lines selected for diverging levels of personality in both males and females [68,69]; to our knowledge, the relationship between behavioural profiles and oestrogens levels has never investigated in birds. We show here that fast explorers (also described as bold or proactive) responded more strongly to the GnRH challenge than slow explorers did (often described as shy or reactive).…”

Maternal diet affects juvenile Carpetan rock lizard performance and personality

“…In amniotes, environmental differences experienced by the mother (i.e., nongenetic maternal effects; see Roff, 1998) may result in considerable and permanent differences in the offspring's physiology, morphology, and behavior (Ensminger, Langkilde, Owen, MacLeod, & Sheriff, 2018;Gosling, 2008;Munch et al, 2018;Räsänen & Kruuk, 2007). Although several studies suggest that maternal effects could drive the emergence of behavioral consistency (Ghio, Leblanc, Audet, & Aubin-Horth, 2016;Langenhof & Komdeur, 2018;McCormick, 2006;Reddon, 2012;Rokka, Pihlaja, Siitari, & Soulsbury, 2014), data on this topic are rather contradictory (Arnaud et al, 2017;Hinde et al, 2015;Petelle, Dang, & Blumstein, 2017;Ruuskanen, 2018). Provision to the egg can be seen as a specific dimension of maternal effects (Deeming & Ferguson, 1991;Stewart & Ecay, 2010), as in oviparous vertebrates, such as many reptiles, trace nutrients (vitamins and minerals) must be deposited into the yolk during oogenesis (Deeming & Ferguson, 1991).…”