Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring
Understanding why females of some mammalian species cease ovulation prior to the end of life is a long-standing interdisciplinary and evolutionary challenge. In humans and some species of toothed whales, females can live for decades after stopping reproduction. This unusual life history trait is tho...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6936675 2023-05-15T17:03:37+02:00 Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring Nattrass, Stuart Croft, Darren P. Ellis, Samuel Cant, Michael A. Weiss, Michael N. Wright, Brianna M. Stredulinsky, Eva Doniol-Valcroze, Thomas Ford, John K. B. Balcomb, Kenneth C. Franks, Daniel W. 2019-12-26 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6936675/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31818941 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903844116 en eng National Academy of Sciences http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6936675/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31818941 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903844116 Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . CC-BY-NC-ND Biological Sciences Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903844116 2020-01-05T01:48:45Z Understanding why females of some mammalian species cease ovulation prior to the end of life is a long-standing interdisciplinary and evolutionary challenge. In humans and some species of toothed whales, females can live for decades after stopping reproduction. This unusual life history trait is thought to have evolved, in part, due to the inclusive fitness benefits that postreproductive females gain by helping kin. In humans, grandmothers gain inclusive fitness benefits by increasing their number of surviving grandoffspring, referred to as the grandmother effect. Among toothed whales, the grandmother effect has not been rigorously tested. Here, we test for the grandmother effect in killer whales, by quantifying grandoffspring survival with living or recently deceased reproductive and postreproductive grandmothers, and show that postreproductive grandmothers provide significant survival benefits to their grandoffspring above that provided by reproductive grandmothers. This provides evidence of the grandmother effect in a nonhuman menopausal species. By stopping reproduction, grandmothers avoid reproductive conflict with their daughters, and offer increased benefits to their grandoffspring. The benefits postreproductive grandmothers provide to their grandoffspring are shown to be most important in difficult times where the salmon abundance is low to moderate. The postreproductive grandmother effect we report, together with the known costs of late-life reproduction in killer whales, can help explain the long postreproductive life spans of resident killer whales. Text Killer Whale toothed whales Killer whale PubMed Central (PMC) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 52 26669 26673 |
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Biological Sciences |
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Biological Sciences Nattrass, Stuart Croft, Darren P. Ellis, Samuel Cant, Michael A. Weiss, Michael N. Wright, Brianna M. Stredulinsky, Eva Doniol-Valcroze, Thomas Ford, John K. B. Balcomb, Kenneth C. Franks, Daniel W. Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring |
topic_facet |
Biological Sciences |
description |
Understanding why females of some mammalian species cease ovulation prior to the end of life is a long-standing interdisciplinary and evolutionary challenge. In humans and some species of toothed whales, females can live for decades after stopping reproduction. This unusual life history trait is thought to have evolved, in part, due to the inclusive fitness benefits that postreproductive females gain by helping kin. In humans, grandmothers gain inclusive fitness benefits by increasing their number of surviving grandoffspring, referred to as the grandmother effect. Among toothed whales, the grandmother effect has not been rigorously tested. Here, we test for the grandmother effect in killer whales, by quantifying grandoffspring survival with living or recently deceased reproductive and postreproductive grandmothers, and show that postreproductive grandmothers provide significant survival benefits to their grandoffspring above that provided by reproductive grandmothers. This provides evidence of the grandmother effect in a nonhuman menopausal species. By stopping reproduction, grandmothers avoid reproductive conflict with their daughters, and offer increased benefits to their grandoffspring. The benefits postreproductive grandmothers provide to their grandoffspring are shown to be most important in difficult times where the salmon abundance is low to moderate. The postreproductive grandmother effect we report, together with the known costs of late-life reproduction in killer whales, can help explain the long postreproductive life spans of resident killer whales. |
format |
Text |
author |
Nattrass, Stuart Croft, Darren P. Ellis, Samuel Cant, Michael A. Weiss, Michael N. Wright, Brianna M. Stredulinsky, Eva Doniol-Valcroze, Thomas Ford, John K. B. Balcomb, Kenneth C. Franks, Daniel W. |
author_facet |
Nattrass, Stuart Croft, Darren P. Ellis, Samuel Cant, Michael A. Weiss, Michael N. Wright, Brianna M. Stredulinsky, Eva Doniol-Valcroze, Thomas Ford, John K. B. Balcomb, Kenneth C. Franks, Daniel W. |
author_sort |
Nattrass, Stuart |
title |
Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring |
title_short |
Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring |
title_full |
Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring |
title_fullStr |
Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring |
title_full_unstemmed |
Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring |
title_sort |
postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring |
publisher |
National Academy of Sciences |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6936675/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31818941 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903844116 |
genre |
Killer Whale toothed whales Killer whale |
genre_facet |
Killer Whale toothed whales Killer whale |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6936675/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31818941 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903844116 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY-NC-ND |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903844116 |
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
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116 |
container_issue |
52 |
container_start_page |
26669 |
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26673 |
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1766057530295844864 |