Dunning, J. orcid.org/0000-0001-8234-8526, Burke, T. orcid.org/0000-0003-3848-1244 and Schroeder, J. (2024) Divorce is linked with extra‐pair paternity in a monogamous passerine. Journal of Avian Biology, 2024 (3-4). e03171. ISSN 0908-8857
Abstract
The question of why socially monogamous females engage in extra-pair behaviour is long-standing in evolutionary biology. Due to a lack of empirical support among passerine birds, recent work has moved away from the indirect-benefits hypothesis to explain extra-pair mating behaviour by females, instead favouring the hypothesis that this is the result of a pleiotropic effect. That is, a trait under strong positive selection in either or both sexes are genetically linked with another, potentially unrelated, trait. For example, genes beneficial to female fecundity (that promote within-pair solicitation of mating from a male partner) might also lead to extra-pair behaviour (by also promoting solicited copulations from extra-pair males). Here, we test two predictions from this hypothesis: We test the prediction that female divorce, measured as the number of social mates within a given year, is linked with 1) the number of extra-pair males engaged by the female and 2) the proportion of the female's offspring that are extra-pair. Our results show that females who divorce their social partner are more likely to produce extra-pair offspring than those who maintain social monogamy, supporting the pleiotropy hypothesis. However, those females did not also have a higher proportion of extra-pair offspring. The number of broods initiated was also positively correlated with the number of extra-pair males that sired a female's offspring, probably through increased opportunity for extra-pair males to sire offspring over a longer breeding season. Our results support the intrasexual pleiotropy hypothesis as a driver of female extra-pair behaviour.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Avian Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | divorce; extra-pair paternity; genetic pedigree; GLMM; house sparrow |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Nov 2023 11:45 |
Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2024 12:17 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/jav.03171 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:205558 |