Fluctuating food resources influence developmental plasticity in wild boar |
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Authors: | Marlène Gamelon Mathieu Douhard Eric Baubet Olivier Gimenez Serge Brandt Jean-Michel Gaillard |
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Institution: | 1.UMR 5558, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, Université de Lyon, 69000 Lyon; Université Lyon 1, 69622 Villeurbanne, France;2.Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage, 2 Bis Rue des Religieuses, BP 19, 52120 Châteauvillain, France;3.UMR 5175, Centre d''Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Campus CNRS, 1919 route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France |
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Abstract: | To maximize long-term average reproductive success, individuals can diversify the phenotypes of offspring produced within a reproductive event by displaying the ‘coin-flipping’ tactic. Wild boar (Sus scrofa scrofa) females have been reported to adopt this tactic. However, whether the magnitude of developmental plasticity within a litter depends on stochasticity in food resources has not been yet investigated. From long-term monitoring, we found that juvenile females produced similar-sized fetuses within a litter independent of food availability. By contrast, adult females adjusted their relative allocation to littermates to the amount of food resources, by providing a similar allocation to all littermates in years of poor food resources but producing highly diversified offspring phenotypes within a litter in years of abundant food resources. By minimizing sibling rivalry, such a plastic reproductive tactic allows adult wild boar females to maximize the number of littermates for a given breeding event. |
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Keywords: | coin-flipping fetus mass food resources mast production variable environment |
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