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Partial fertility and polyandry: a benefit of multiple mating hiding in plain sight?

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Abstract

Multiple mating is common in many socially monogamous birds and mammals, but why is still unclear. Fertility insurance is one the posited genetic benefits. However, this mechanism fails if females cannot detect male infertility before mating, and infertile sperm are equally capable of fertilizing eggs (e.g., fertilization occurs but is followed by early developmental arrest): multiple mating simply exchanges whole brood loss for partial brood loss with no difference in the overall proportion of failed offspring. However, I note here that these two options will rarely result in equivalent reproductive success: partial brood loss will generally result in more surviving offspring than whole brood loss vs. whole brood survival due to increasing per capita survival of offspring in smaller broods. A partial fertility strategy can yield benefits even in the extreme case where fertility is cryptic and defective sperm are capable of fertilizing eggs. Moreover, partial fertility will yield an added benefit to fertility insurance when the precedence of fertile over infertile sperm is incomplete.

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Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the assistance of a very large number of field assistants—too numerous to list here—over the years. I am grateful to them all. Funding for this work was provided by the University of Winnipeg and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. I thank Trish Schwagmeyer, Douglas Mock, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Scott Forbes.

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Communicated by D. Rubenstein

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Forbes, S. Partial fertility and polyandry: a benefit of multiple mating hiding in plain sight?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 68, 1329–1334 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1743-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1743-6

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