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Low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care

BACKGROUND: Reproductive skew, the uneven distribution of reproductive success among individuals, is a common feature of many animal populations. Several scenarios have been proposed to favour either high or low levels of reproductive skew. Particularly a male-biased operational sex ratio and the as...

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Autores principales: Mangold, Alexandra, Trenkwalder, Katharina, Ringler, Max, Hödl, Walter, Ringler, Eva
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4558732/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26334630
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0469-z
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author Mangold, Alexandra
Trenkwalder, Katharina
Ringler, Max
Hödl, Walter
Ringler, Eva
author_facet Mangold, Alexandra
Trenkwalder, Katharina
Ringler, Max
Hödl, Walter
Ringler, Eva
author_sort Mangold, Alexandra
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Reproductive skew, the uneven distribution of reproductive success among individuals, is a common feature of many animal populations. Several scenarios have been proposed to favour either high or low levels of reproductive skew. Particularly a male-biased operational sex ratio and the asynchronous arrival of females is expected to cause high variation in reproductive success among males. Recently it has been suggested that the type of benefits provided by males (fixed vs. dilutable) could also strongly impact individual mating patterns, and thereby affecting reproductive skew. We tested this hypothesis in Hyalinobatrachium valerioi, a Neotropical glass frog with prolonged breeding and paternal care. RESULTS: We monitored and genetically sampled a natural population in southwestern Costa Rica during the breeding season in 2012 and performed parentage analysis of adult frogs and tadpoles to investigate individual mating frequencies, possible mating preferences, and estimate reproductive skew in males and females. We identified a polygamous mating system, where high proportions of males (69 %) and females (94 %) reproduced successfully. The variance in male mating success could largely be attributed to differences in time spent calling at the reproductive site, but not to body size or relatedness. Female H. valerioi were not choosy and mated indiscriminately with available males. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support the hypothesis that dilutable male benefits - such as parental care - can favour female polyandry and maintain low levels of reproductive skew among males within a population, even in the presence of direct male-male competition and a highly male-biased operational sex ratio. We hypothesize that low male reproductive skew might be a general characteristic in prolonged breeders with paternal care. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0469-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-45587322015-09-04 Low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care Mangold, Alexandra Trenkwalder, Katharina Ringler, Max Hödl, Walter Ringler, Eva BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Reproductive skew, the uneven distribution of reproductive success among individuals, is a common feature of many animal populations. Several scenarios have been proposed to favour either high or low levels of reproductive skew. Particularly a male-biased operational sex ratio and the asynchronous arrival of females is expected to cause high variation in reproductive success among males. Recently it has been suggested that the type of benefits provided by males (fixed vs. dilutable) could also strongly impact individual mating patterns, and thereby affecting reproductive skew. We tested this hypothesis in Hyalinobatrachium valerioi, a Neotropical glass frog with prolonged breeding and paternal care. RESULTS: We monitored and genetically sampled a natural population in southwestern Costa Rica during the breeding season in 2012 and performed parentage analysis of adult frogs and tadpoles to investigate individual mating frequencies, possible mating preferences, and estimate reproductive skew in males and females. We identified a polygamous mating system, where high proportions of males (69 %) and females (94 %) reproduced successfully. The variance in male mating success could largely be attributed to differences in time spent calling at the reproductive site, but not to body size or relatedness. Female H. valerioi were not choosy and mated indiscriminately with available males. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support the hypothesis that dilutable male benefits - such as parental care - can favour female polyandry and maintain low levels of reproductive skew among males within a population, even in the presence of direct male-male competition and a highly male-biased operational sex ratio. We hypothesize that low male reproductive skew might be a general characteristic in prolonged breeders with paternal care. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0469-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4558732/ /pubmed/26334630 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0469-z Text en © Alexandra et al. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mangold, Alexandra
Trenkwalder, Katharina
Ringler, Max
Hödl, Walter
Ringler, Eva
Low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care
title Low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care
title_full Low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care
title_fullStr Low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care
title_full_unstemmed Low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care
title_short Low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care
title_sort low reproductive skew despite high male-biased operational sex ratio in a glass frog with paternal care
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4558732/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26334630
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0469-z
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