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Inbreeding depression in red deer calves

BACKGROUND: Understanding the fitness consequences of inbreeding is of major importance for evolutionary and conservation biology. However, there are few studies using pedigree-based estimates of inbreeding or investigating the influence of environment and age variation on inbreeding depression in n...

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Autores principales: Walling, Craig A, Nussey, Daniel H, Morris, Alison, Clutton-Brock, Tim H, Kruuk, Loeske EB, Pemberton, Josephine M
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3226574/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22039837
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-318
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author Walling, Craig A
Nussey, Daniel H
Morris, Alison
Clutton-Brock, Tim H
Kruuk, Loeske EB
Pemberton, Josephine M
author_facet Walling, Craig A
Nussey, Daniel H
Morris, Alison
Clutton-Brock, Tim H
Kruuk, Loeske EB
Pemberton, Josephine M
author_sort Walling, Craig A
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Understanding the fitness consequences of inbreeding is of major importance for evolutionary and conservation biology. However, there are few studies using pedigree-based estimates of inbreeding or investigating the influence of environment and age variation on inbreeding depression in natural populations. Here we investigated the consequences of variation in inbreeding coefficient for three juvenile traits, birth date, birth weight and first year survival, in a wild population of red deer, considering both calf and mother's inbreeding coefficient. We also tested whether inbreeding depression varied with environmental conditions and maternal age. RESULTS: We detected non-zero inbreeding coefficients for 22% of individuals with both parents and at least one grandparent known (increasing to 42% if the dataset was restricted to those with four known grandparents). Inbreeding depression was evident for birth weight and first year survival but not for birth date: the first year survival of offspring with an inbreeding coefficient of 0.25 was reduced by 77% compared to offspring with an inbreeding coefficient of zero. However, it was independent of measures of environmental variation and maternal age. The effect of inbreeding on birth weight appeared to be driven by highly inbred individuals (F = 0.25). On the other hand first year survival showed strong inbreeding depression that was not solely driven by individuals with the highest inbreeding coefficients, corresponding to an estimate of 4.35 lethal equivalents. CONCLUSIONS: These results represent a rare demonstration of inbreeding depression using pedigree-based estimates in a wild mammal population and highlight the potential strength of effects on key components of fitness.
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spelling pubmed-32265742011-11-30 Inbreeding depression in red deer calves Walling, Craig A Nussey, Daniel H Morris, Alison Clutton-Brock, Tim H Kruuk, Loeske EB Pemberton, Josephine M BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Understanding the fitness consequences of inbreeding is of major importance for evolutionary and conservation biology. However, there are few studies using pedigree-based estimates of inbreeding or investigating the influence of environment and age variation on inbreeding depression in natural populations. Here we investigated the consequences of variation in inbreeding coefficient for three juvenile traits, birth date, birth weight and first year survival, in a wild population of red deer, considering both calf and mother's inbreeding coefficient. We also tested whether inbreeding depression varied with environmental conditions and maternal age. RESULTS: We detected non-zero inbreeding coefficients for 22% of individuals with both parents and at least one grandparent known (increasing to 42% if the dataset was restricted to those with four known grandparents). Inbreeding depression was evident for birth weight and first year survival but not for birth date: the first year survival of offspring with an inbreeding coefficient of 0.25 was reduced by 77% compared to offspring with an inbreeding coefficient of zero. However, it was independent of measures of environmental variation and maternal age. The effect of inbreeding on birth weight appeared to be driven by highly inbred individuals (F = 0.25). On the other hand first year survival showed strong inbreeding depression that was not solely driven by individuals with the highest inbreeding coefficients, corresponding to an estimate of 4.35 lethal equivalents. CONCLUSIONS: These results represent a rare demonstration of inbreeding depression using pedigree-based estimates in a wild mammal population and highlight the potential strength of effects on key components of fitness. BioMed Central 2011-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC3226574/ /pubmed/22039837 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-318 Text en Copyright ©2011 Walling et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Walling, Craig A
Nussey, Daniel H
Morris, Alison
Clutton-Brock, Tim H
Kruuk, Loeske EB
Pemberton, Josephine M
Inbreeding depression in red deer calves
title Inbreeding depression in red deer calves
title_full Inbreeding depression in red deer calves
title_fullStr Inbreeding depression in red deer calves
title_full_unstemmed Inbreeding depression in red deer calves
title_short Inbreeding depression in red deer calves
title_sort inbreeding depression in red deer calves
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3226574/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22039837
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-318
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