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Adaptive sex allocation by brood reduction in antechinuses

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Abstract

Antechinuses (Dasyuridae: Marsupialia) exhibit dramatic interpopulation variation in the sex ratio at birth, a pattern which has previously been interpreted in terms of both local resource competition and Trivers/Willard effects. However, Antechinus stuartii usually fail to wean all the young that attach to their teats. At least in captivity, this is because they often eat their young. In free-living populations, brood reduction affects sons and daughters differently. Mothers virtually always wean some daughters. The probability that a daughter will be weaned declines with the number of daughters in the pouch. The health or quality of the mother does not affect the number of daughters weaned. By contrast, mothers tend to wean all or none of their sons. A strong correlate of infanticide against sons is senescence. Old mothers rarely invest in sons, and produce low-quality daughters. Mothers suffer a direct cost (mortality during lace lactation) of male-biased litters. Coupled with data on prenatal sex allocation, these results support the conjoint influence of local resource competition and the Trivers-Willard effect. However, they suggest that in populations where females are largely semelparous, the population optimum generated by local resource competition may be unattainable, because of the importance of producing at least one daughter. These observations support recent theoretical claims that the sex ratio at the population level is not easily predicted, but suggest that the diversity of mammalian sex allocation tactics has been underestimated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Evolutionary Ecology Group, Division of Botany and Zoology, Australian National University, ACT 0200, Canberra, Australia

    Andrew Cockburn

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Communicated by P. Harvey

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Cockburn, A. Adaptive sex allocation by brood reduction in antechinuses. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 35, 53–62 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00167060

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00167060

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