Kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold?
Resource polygyny incurs costs of having to share breeding resources for female breeders. When breeding with a relative, however, such costs may be lessened by indirect fitness benefits through kin selection, while benefits from mutualistic behaviour, such as communal defence, may increase. If so, f...
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crroyalsociety:10.1098/rsos.140409 2024-06-02T08:15:42+00:00 Kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold? Grønstøl, Gaute Blomqvist, Donald Pauliny, Angela Wagner, Richard H. 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.140409 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.140409 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rsos.140409 en eng The Royal Society https://royalsociety.org/journals/ethics-policies/data-sharing-mining/ Royal Society Open Science volume 2, issue 6, page 140409 ISSN 2054-5703 journal-article 2015 crroyalsociety https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.140409 2024-05-07T14:16:20Z Resource polygyny incurs costs of having to share breeding resources for female breeders. When breeding with a relative, however, such costs may be lessened by indirect fitness benefits through kin selection, while benefits from mutualistic behaviour, such as communal defence, may increase. If so, females should be less resistant to sharing a territory with a related female than with a non-related one. We investigated whether kin selection may lower the threshold of breeding polygynously, predicting a closer relatedness between polygynous females breeding on the same territory than between females breeding on different territories. Northern lapwings, Vanellus vanellus , are suitable for testing this hypothesis as they are commonly polygynous, both sexes take part in nest defence, and the efficiency of nest defence increases with the number of defenders. Using an index of relatedness derived from DNA fingerprinting, we found that female lapwings that shared polygynous dyads were on average twice as closely related as were random females. Furthermore, relatedness did not correlate with distance between breeders, indicating that our findings cannot be explained by natal philopatry alone. Our results suggest that the polygyny threshold in lapwings may be lowered by inclusive fitness advantages of kin selection. Article in Journal/Newspaper Vanellus vanellus The Royal Society Royal Society Open Science 2 6 140409 |
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Open Polar |
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The Royal Society |
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crroyalsociety |
language |
English |
description |
Resource polygyny incurs costs of having to share breeding resources for female breeders. When breeding with a relative, however, such costs may be lessened by indirect fitness benefits through kin selection, while benefits from mutualistic behaviour, such as communal defence, may increase. If so, females should be less resistant to sharing a territory with a related female than with a non-related one. We investigated whether kin selection may lower the threshold of breeding polygynously, predicting a closer relatedness between polygynous females breeding on the same territory than between females breeding on different territories. Northern lapwings, Vanellus vanellus , are suitable for testing this hypothesis as they are commonly polygynous, both sexes take part in nest defence, and the efficiency of nest defence increases with the number of defenders. Using an index of relatedness derived from DNA fingerprinting, we found that female lapwings that shared polygynous dyads were on average twice as closely related as were random females. Furthermore, relatedness did not correlate with distance between breeders, indicating that our findings cannot be explained by natal philopatry alone. Our results suggest that the polygyny threshold in lapwings may be lowered by inclusive fitness advantages of kin selection. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Grønstøl, Gaute Blomqvist, Donald Pauliny, Angela Wagner, Richard H. |
spellingShingle |
Grønstøl, Gaute Blomqvist, Donald Pauliny, Angela Wagner, Richard H. Kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold? |
author_facet |
Grønstøl, Gaute Blomqvist, Donald Pauliny, Angela Wagner, Richard H. |
author_sort |
Grønstøl, Gaute |
title |
Kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold? |
title_short |
Kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold? |
title_full |
Kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold? |
title_fullStr |
Kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold? |
title_full_unstemmed |
Kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold? |
title_sort |
kin selection and polygyny: can relatedness lower the polygyny threshold? |
publisher |
The Royal Society |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.140409 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.140409 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rsos.140409 |
genre |
Vanellus vanellus |
genre_facet |
Vanellus vanellus |
op_source |
Royal Society Open Science volume 2, issue 6, page 140409 ISSN 2054-5703 |
op_rights |
https://royalsociety.org/journals/ethics-policies/data-sharing-mining/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.140409 |
container_title |
Royal Society Open Science |
container_volume |
2 |
container_issue |
6 |
container_start_page |
140409 |
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1800739972459790336 |