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Maternal and paternal contributions to egg size and egg number variation in the blackfin pearl killifish Austrolebias nigripinnis

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Abstract

Reproductive effort, egg number and egg size are traditionally considered to be ‘female’ life history traits. However, females often adjust the amount of resources allocated to reproduction depending on their mate, causing male environmental effects on life history traits. If females respond to male traits which are genetically variable, then male environmental effects contain indirect genetic effects. Estimates of how much of the total variation in life history traits originates from female effects versus male environmental effects, seems mostly lacking. We have investigated variation in rates of egg production and in egg size in the annual Argentinian blackfin pearl killifish Austrolebias nigripinnis, in a crossed design where males were exchanged repeatedly between females. Our analysis of phenotypic variance components of reproductive effort, egg size and egg number indicates that the amount of variation contributed by male environmental effects is equal (egg size, reproductive effort) or larger (egg number) than that between females. For egg size and number, we find that male environmental effects consist of a male random effect representing the average response of females to male phenotype, plus a female-male interaction term. This term can be understood as the deviation from the population mean of an individual female’s response. For reproductive effort, we find that the male environmental effect consists of an interaction term only. Random effects on egg size and number additionally vary in magnitude depending on the weekday where we collected eggs, probably due to cyclic variation in experimental conditions. Since we find that both male phenotype and environmental conditions affect egg size and number as determined by females, our results suggest that selection on these life history traits will be frequency-dependent.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Martin Fourcade and GAK for hospitality and assistance during fieldwork in Argentina. The Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of Iran provided funding for MM. Martine Maan gave comments on a previous version of this manuscript. All animals were kept, bred and handled in accordance with Dutch animal welfare regulations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Kaiserstraat 63, 2311GP, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Mahmoud Moshgani & Tom J. M. Van Dooren

  2. Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Birjand University, P.O. Box 97175/376, Birjand, Iran

    Mahmoud Moshgani

  3. Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis, P.O. Box 9517, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Tom J. M. Van Dooren

  4. UMR7625 Ecology and Evolution, École Normale Supérieure, Rue d’Ulm 42, 75032, Paris, France

    Tom J. M. Van Dooren

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  1. Mahmoud Moshgani
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Correspondence to Tom J. M. Van Dooren.

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Moshgani, M., Van Dooren, T.J.M. Maternal and paternal contributions to egg size and egg number variation in the blackfin pearl killifish Austrolebias nigripinnis . Evol Ecol 25, 1179–1195 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-011-9469-7

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