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Artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs

BACKGROUND: The amount of resources provided by the mother before birth has important and long-lasting effects on offspring fitness. Despite this, there is a large amount of variation in maternal investment seen in natural populations. Life-history theory predicts that this variation is maintained t...

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Autores principales: Pick, Joel L., Hutter, Pascale, Ebneter, Christina, Ziegler, Ann-Kathrin, Giordano, Marta, Tschirren, Barbara
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4995767/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27559356
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-016-0172-y
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author Pick, Joel L.
Hutter, Pascale
Ebneter, Christina
Ziegler, Ann-Kathrin
Giordano, Marta
Tschirren, Barbara
author_facet Pick, Joel L.
Hutter, Pascale
Ebneter, Christina
Ziegler, Ann-Kathrin
Giordano, Marta
Tschirren, Barbara
author_sort Pick, Joel L.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The amount of resources provided by the mother before birth has important and long-lasting effects on offspring fitness. Despite this, there is a large amount of variation in maternal investment seen in natural populations. Life-history theory predicts that this variation is maintained through a trade-off between the benefits of high maternal investment for the offspring and the costs of high investment for the mother. However, the proximate mechanisms underlying these costs of reproduction are not well understood. Here we used artificial selection for high and low maternal egg investment in a precocial bird, the Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) to quantify costs of maternal reproductive investment. RESULTS: We show that females from the high maternal investment lines had significantly larger reproductive organs, which explained their overall larger body mass, and resulted in a higher resting metabolic rate (RMR). Contrary to our expectations, this increase in metabolic activity did not lead to a higher level of oxidative damage. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to provide experimental evidence for metabolic costs of increased per offspring investment.
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spelling pubmed-49957672016-08-25 Artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs Pick, Joel L. Hutter, Pascale Ebneter, Christina Ziegler, Ann-Kathrin Giordano, Marta Tschirren, Barbara Front Zool Research BACKGROUND: The amount of resources provided by the mother before birth has important and long-lasting effects on offspring fitness. Despite this, there is a large amount of variation in maternal investment seen in natural populations. Life-history theory predicts that this variation is maintained through a trade-off between the benefits of high maternal investment for the offspring and the costs of high investment for the mother. However, the proximate mechanisms underlying these costs of reproduction are not well understood. Here we used artificial selection for high and low maternal egg investment in a precocial bird, the Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) to quantify costs of maternal reproductive investment. RESULTS: We show that females from the high maternal investment lines had significantly larger reproductive organs, which explained their overall larger body mass, and resulted in a higher resting metabolic rate (RMR). Contrary to our expectations, this increase in metabolic activity did not lead to a higher level of oxidative damage. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to provide experimental evidence for metabolic costs of increased per offspring investment. BioMed Central 2016-08-23 /pmc/articles/PMC4995767/ /pubmed/27559356 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-016-0172-y Text en © The Author(s). 2016 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
Pick, Joel L.
Hutter, Pascale
Ebneter, Christina
Ziegler, Ann-Kathrin
Giordano, Marta
Tschirren, Barbara
Artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs
title Artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs
title_full Artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs
title_fullStr Artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs
title_full_unstemmed Artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs
title_short Artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs
title_sort artificial selection reveals the energetic expense of producing larger eggs
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4995767/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27559356
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-016-0172-y
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