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Reproductive biology of Gazella arabica: Predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival

Reproductive traits are central to organismal fitness, and so the factors influencing patterns of reproduction and offspring survival are at the heart of biology. Making use of breeding data collected over 16 years at the King Khalid Wildlife Research Centre in Saudi Arabia, we investigated the repr...

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Autores principales: Martin, Ryan A, Riesch, Rüdiger, Plath, Martin, Al Hanoosh, Naif A, Wronski, Torsten
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10591149/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37876648
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoac084
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author Martin, Ryan A
Riesch, Rüdiger
Plath, Martin
Al Hanoosh, Naif A
Wronski, Torsten
author_facet Martin, Ryan A
Riesch, Rüdiger
Plath, Martin
Al Hanoosh, Naif A
Wronski, Torsten
author_sort Martin, Ryan A
collection PubMed
description Reproductive traits are central to organismal fitness, and so the factors influencing patterns of reproduction and offspring survival are at the heart of biology. Making use of breeding data collected over 16 years at the King Khalid Wildlife Research Centre in Saudi Arabia, we investigated the reproductive biology of Arabian gazelles Gazella arabica. Offspring survival was mainly a function of birth weight, with heavier offspring having higher survival rates than lighter offspring. However, while sons were heavier than daughters, daughters had higher survival rates. We could not find evidence that giving birth to sons negatively impacts offspring weight in the following year. We uncovered large narrow-sense heritability (h(2)) in offspring weight at birth, while maternal effects (m(2)) on birth weight were of lesser importance. However, maternal effects on offspring survival were strong until weaning age, while paternal effects dominated survival to sexual maturity and first reproduction. We propose that variation in maternal postnatal care might overshadow the effects of maternal inheritance of birth weights, while the overall strong heritability of weight at birth and the paternal effects on survival illustrates strong variance in sire fitness based on genetic quality, suggesting a role for sexual selection by female mate choice in wild populations.
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spelling pubmed-105911492023-10-24 Reproductive biology of Gazella arabica: Predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival Martin, Ryan A Riesch, Rüdiger Plath, Martin Al Hanoosh, Naif A Wronski, Torsten Curr Zool Original Articles Reproductive traits are central to organismal fitness, and so the factors influencing patterns of reproduction and offspring survival are at the heart of biology. Making use of breeding data collected over 16 years at the King Khalid Wildlife Research Centre in Saudi Arabia, we investigated the reproductive biology of Arabian gazelles Gazella arabica. Offspring survival was mainly a function of birth weight, with heavier offspring having higher survival rates than lighter offspring. However, while sons were heavier than daughters, daughters had higher survival rates. We could not find evidence that giving birth to sons negatively impacts offspring weight in the following year. We uncovered large narrow-sense heritability (h(2)) in offspring weight at birth, while maternal effects (m(2)) on birth weight were of lesser importance. However, maternal effects on offspring survival were strong until weaning age, while paternal effects dominated survival to sexual maturity and first reproduction. We propose that variation in maternal postnatal care might overshadow the effects of maternal inheritance of birth weights, while the overall strong heritability of weight at birth and the paternal effects on survival illustrates strong variance in sire fitness based on genetic quality, suggesting a role for sexual selection by female mate choice in wild populations. Oxford University Press 2022-10-26 /pmc/articles/PMC10591149/ /pubmed/37876648 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoac084 Text en © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Editorial Office, Current Zoology. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Original Articles
Martin, Ryan A
Riesch, Rüdiger
Plath, Martin
Al Hanoosh, Naif A
Wronski, Torsten
Reproductive biology of Gazella arabica: Predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival
title Reproductive biology of Gazella arabica: Predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival
title_full Reproductive biology of Gazella arabica: Predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival
title_fullStr Reproductive biology of Gazella arabica: Predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival
title_full_unstemmed Reproductive biology of Gazella arabica: Predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival
title_short Reproductive biology of Gazella arabica: Predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival
title_sort reproductive biology of gazella arabica: predictors of offspring weight and short- and long-term offspring survival
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10591149/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37876648
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoac084
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