Reproductive success and the energetic cost of parental care in male smallmouth bass

1999 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. Gillooly ◽  
J. R. Baylis

<em>Abstract</em>.—Long-term studies in Ontario, Canada on Largemouth Bass <em>Micropterus salmoides</em> and Smallmouth Bass <em>M. dolomieu</em> have demonstrated that angling nesting males (both catch and harvest and catch and release) can have negative impacts on the reproductive success for the captured individual. They have also demonstrated that within a population, the male bass that provide the best and longest parental care for their offspring are the most capable of having the greatest relative contribution to the year-class. Furthermore, those males are also the most aggressive toward potential brood predators and, hence, the most vulnerable to angling. Based on those relationships, we postulated that angling in general, and especially angling for nesting bass, results in selection against aggressive individuals in a population, and as a result, the angled population evolves to become less aggressive, containing males with diminished parental care attributes, an example of fisheries-induced evolution (FIE). We recognize, however, that some change towards less aggressive behaviors may also result from learning and phenotypic plasticity. Controlled, long-term selective breeding experiments over 30+ years have, however, documented the heritability of vulnerability of bass to angling and, hence, the potential for selection to act on that trait. Reproductive competition experiments further demonstrated that the highly vulnerable strain of bass produced in those selective breeding experiments indeed had greater reproductive success than the less vulnerable strain. Because angling for Largemouth Bass has been occurring for decades, we also postulated that there should be some evidence in the wild of this FIE. In fact, we did find that the level of vulnerability to angling of nesting male Largemouth Bass in lakes that have had little to no exploitation was significantly greater than that observed for nesting males in moderately and heavily angled populations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Marion Cheron ◽  
Frédéric Angelier ◽  
Cécile Ribout ◽  
François Brischoux

Abstract Reproductive success is often related to parental quality, a parameter expressed through various traits, such as site selection, mate selection and energetic investment in the eggs or progeny. Owing to the complex interactions between environmental and parental characteristics occurring at various stages of the reproductive event, it is often complicated to tease apart the relative contributions of these different factors to reproductive success. Study systems where these complex interactions are simplified (e.g. absence of parental care) can help us to understand how metrics of parental quality (e.g. gamete and egg quality) influence reproductive success. Using such a study system in a common garden experiment, we investigated the relationships between clutch hatching success (a proxy of clutch quality) and offspring quality in an amphibian species lacking post-oviposition parental care. We found a relationship between clutch quality and embryonic development duration and hatchling phenotype. We found that hatchling telomere length was linked to hatching success. These results suggest that clutch quality is linked to early life traits in larval amphibians and that deciphering the influence of parental traits on the patterns we detected is a promising avenue of research.


The Auk ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 105 (3) ◽  
pp. 553-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dianne H. Brunton

Abstract The reproductive investment strategies of the sexes during the breeding season are detailed for Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus), a monogamous plover. I measured the energy investments of the sexes in reproductive, mating, and parental effort. As predicted, males expend more mating effort than females; however, the sexes expend equal amounts of parental effort. Total energy expenditure in reproductive effort (mating and parental effort) during a successful nesting attempt was also equal for the sexes. However, early parental effort expenditures by females, early mating effort expenditures by males, and high rates of nest failure combine to result in female reproductive energy expenditures being significantly higher over the breeding season. This suggests that energy expenditure alone is not adequate for accurate comparisons of the relative investments of the sexes. Studies investigating male and female investments need to consider the degree and pattern of nest failures along with patterns of energy expenditure. The advantages to male and female Killdeer of sharing parental care is demonstrated using adult removal experiments. In general, a deserted parent expends more energy in parental effort than a bi-parental parent and has significantly lower reproductive success. However, males are able to hatch chicks, whereas females lose or abandon their nests within a few days of mate removal. Thus, monogamy in Killdeer appears to result from high nest failure rates, the necessity of two parents for any reproductive success, and the generalizable nature of Killdeer parental care.


Behaviour ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 133 (13-14) ◽  
pp. 1077-1094 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos Rodrigues

AbstractThe males of most bird species help to raise the young, and females may suffer costs from polygyny because of having to share the male parental care. In the chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita) nests of monogamously and polygynously mated females had similar success in relation to the proportion of fledged young. Overall, male chiffchaffs provided little assistance to females during the nestling period, but they increased help when the young left the nest. Females who choose already-paired males (secondary females) incurred lower reproductive success, because they were unable to start a second brood after raising their first brood. Primary and monogamous females which received male help in the form of food provisioning during the fledgling period were more likely to attempt a second brood. This is the first study that reports associated costs to secondary females due to the lack of paternal aid after the young have fledged the nest. However, secondary females still can obtain compensatory benefits, as predicted by the polygyny threshold model, since most of them settled in good quality habitats, close to the primary females.


1997 ◽  
Vol 54 (9) ◽  
pp. 2007-2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Rejwan ◽  
B J Shuter ◽  
M S Ridgway ◽  
N C Collins

Smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) nests were patchily distributed within the littoral zone of Lake Opeongo at two spatial scales (1 km and 100 m shoreline segments). Nest locations were recorded by snorkelling along 155 and 6.3 km of littoral zone over 4 and 11 years, respectively. The degree of patchiness was greater and occurred more consistently at the 1-km than at the 100-m spatial scale. However, the degree of patchiness was not significantly affected by 200% differences in spawning population size, implying that competitive interactions did not strongly influence nest locations over the study period. High-density nesting areas remained stationary between years at the 1-km and 100-m scales. This suggests that habitat variables having stationary spatial characteristics, influence nest site choice. Since the locations of nest patches are less stationary and less consistent among 100-m than among 1-km scale sites, influential habitat variables at the 100-m scale are either less important to the locations of nests or less stationary from year-to-year in their effects on nest distributions. If stationary nest patches are typical of spawning smallmouth bass in lakes, permanent protection of known patch locations could enhance their reproductive success.


2000 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 667-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. V. SANTOS ◽  
M. M. MARTINS

Studies on cooperative care of offspring in callitrichid primates are biased in favor of observations in captivity. In the wild, however, individuals have to deal with environmental pressures, which may influence their social behavior. We compared the individual effort attributed to parental care offered by members of a wild group (couple, plus a subadult helper) and two captive groups (A: couple, plus an subadult helper, B: couple, plus four adult helpers) of the buffy-tufted-ear marmoset, Callithrix aurita, from weeks 1-12 after the infants' birth. The carrier (breeding male and female or helper) and the infant's feeding (food sharing and foraging for food) were recorded. Up to week four, while the wild breeding pair shared infant carrying at similar proportions, the male from captive group A carried 100% of the time. Adult helpers from group B were the main carriers. Carrying behavior extended up to week 12 only in the wild group. Food provisioning to the infant was observed earlier in the groups wild and A, but general proportion of feeding records was lower in the wild than in captivity. Energetic cost of travelling and searching for food may be associated with equal division of carrying behavior by the wild breeding pair. Higher proportions of carrying in the groups wild and B may have delayed the development of the infants' motor skills required in foraging. Our data agree with previous studies: the father's lower investment in carrying when adult helpers are present and lower contribution of subadult non-reproductive members.


2008 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn M. O'Neal ◽  
Dustin G. Reichard ◽  
Katie Pavilis ◽  
Ellen D. Ketterson

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