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Quantitative Genetic Perspectives on Female Macaque Life Histories

Heritability, Plasticity, and Trade-Offs

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Part of the book series: Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects ((DIPR,volume 37))

Abstract

All life histories are a complex of trade-offs that depend on individual conditions—including size, age, and sex—and adaptively mold suites of traits through the biased intergenerational transmission of successful physiological strategies. I explore intrapopulation variation in how female rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago have negotiated a central life history trade-off: when to start reproducing. I emphasize how evolutionary quantitative genetic models require explicit links between hypothesized or measured patterns of selection and the genetic substrates that influence phenotypes and change intergenerationally. Perhaps counterintuitively, I also show how genetic models offer valuable insights on how environments, including those provided by mothers and other kin, affect offspring development and later female life histories. The emerging picture of female macaque maturation is one of the great flexibility and environmental responsiveness coupled with an important genetic component that is significantly entangled with later life history events.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Kate Clancy, Katie Hinde, and Julienne Rutherford for the invitation to contribute to this chapter. Cayo Santiago is part of the Caribbean Primate Research Center (CPRC) which is supported by the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The facility is also supported by Grant Number CM-5 P40 RR003640-20 from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of NIH. The contents of this chapter are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of NCRR or NIH. Additional funding for this research came from the University of Illinois Graduate College and the University of Missouri. Melissa Gerald, John Cant, Terry Kensler, Benedikt Hallgrimsson, and Jean Turnquist were all helpful resources while working with CPRC materials. Donald Sade, Richard Rawlins, John Berard, and Melissa Gerald must be credited for the upkeep of the demographic records on Cayo Santiago and Angel “Guelo” Figueroa, Edgar Davila, and Elizabeth Maldonado for their day-to-day maintenance. I also want to thank my wife, Rachel, who was busy building a baby and tackling the rest of life while I wrote this chapter.

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Blomquist, G.E. (2013). Quantitative Genetic Perspectives on Female Macaque Life Histories. In: Clancy, K., Hinde, K., Rutherford, J. (eds) Building Babies. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects, vol 37. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4060-4_20

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