scholarly journals Are attractive male crickets better able to pay the costs of an immune challenge?

Author(s):  
Clint D Kelly ◽  
Melissa Telemeco ◽  
Amy L Toth ◽  
Lyric C Bartholomay

Reproduction and immunity are fitness-related traits that trade-off with each other. Parasite-mediated theories of sexual selection suggest, however, that higher-quality males should suffer smaller costs to reproduction-related traits and behaviours (e.g. sexual display) from an immune challenge because these males possess more resources with which to deal with the challenge. We used Gryllus texensis field crickets to test the prediction that attractive males should better maintain the performance of a fitness-related traits (e.g. calling effort) in the face of an immune challenge compared with unattractive males. We found no support for our original predictions. However, that immune activation causes attractive males to significantly increase their calling effort compared with unattractive males suggests that these males might terminally invest in order to compensate for decreased future reproduction.

PeerJ ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e1501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clint D. Kelly ◽  
Melissa S.C. Telemeco ◽  
Lyric C. Bartholomay

Reproduction and immunity are fitness-related traits that trade-off with each other. Parasite-mediated theories of sexual selection suggest, however, that higher-quality males should suffer smaller costs to reproduction-related traits and behaviours (e.g., sexual display) from an immune challenge because these males possess more resources with which to deal with the challenge. We usedGryllus texensisfield crickets to test the prediction that attractive males should better maintain the performance of fitness-related traits (e.g., calling effort) in the face of an immune challenge compared with unattractive males. We found no support for our original predictions. However, that immune activation causes attractive males to significantly increase their calling effort compared with unattractive males suggests that these males might terminally invest in order to compensate for decreased future reproduction.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clint D Kelly ◽  
Melissa Telemeco ◽  
Amy L Toth ◽  
Lyric C Bartholomay

Reproduction and immunity are fitness-related traits that trade-off with each other. Parasite-mediated theories of sexual selection suggest, however, that higher-quality males should suffer smaller costs to reproduction-related traits and behaviours (e.g. sexual display) from an immune challenge because these males possess more resources with which to deal with the challenge. We used Gryllus texensis field crickets to test the prediction that attractive males should better maintain the performance of a fitness-related traits (e.g. calling effort) in the face of an immune challenge compared with unattractive males. We found no support for our original predictions. However, that immune activation causes attractive males to significantly increase their calling effort compared with unattractive males suggests that these males might terminally invest in order to compensate for decreased future reproduction.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003072702110194
Author(s):  
E Ronner ◽  
J Sumberg ◽  
D Glover ◽  
KKE Descheemaeker ◽  
CJM Almekinders ◽  
...  

How to stimulate technological change to enhance agricultural productivity and reduce poverty remains an area of vigorous debate. In the face of heterogeneity among farm households and rural areas, one proposition is to offer potential users a ‘basket of options’ – a range of agricultural technologies from which potential users may select the ones that are best suited to their specific circumstances. While the idea of a basket of options is now generally accepted, it has attracted little critical attention. In this paper, we reflect on outstanding questions: the appropriate dimensions of a basket, its contents and how they are identified, and how a basket might be presented. We conceive a basket of options in terms of its depth (number of options related to a problem or opportunity) and breadth (the number of different problems or opportunities addressed). The dimensions of a basket should reflect the framing of the problem or opportunity at hand and the objective in offering the basket. We recognise that increasing the number of options leads to a trade-off by decreasing the fraction of those options that are relevant to an individual user. Farmers might try out, adapt or use one or more of the options in a basket, possibly leading to a process of technological change. We emphasise that the selection (or not) of specific options from the basket, and potential adaptation of the options, provide important opportunities for learning. Baskets of options can therefore be understood as important boundary concepts that invite critical engagement, comparison and discussion. Significant knowledge gaps remain, however, about the best ways to present the basket and to guide potential users to select the options that are most relevant to them.


Author(s):  
Kristina Noreikienė ◽  
Kim Jaatinen ◽  
Benjamin B. Steele ◽  
Markus Öst

AbstractGlucocorticoid hormones may mediate trade-offs between current and future reproduction. However, understanding their role is complicated by predation risk, which simultaneously affects the value of the current reproductive investment and elevates glucocorticoid levels. Here, we shed light on these issues in long-lived female Eiders (Somateria mollissima) by investigating how current reproductive investment (clutch size) and hatching success relate to faecal glucocorticoid metabolite [fGCM] level and residual reproductive value (minimum years of breeding experience, body condition, relative telomere length) under spatially variable predation risk. Our results showed a positive relationship between colony-specific predation risk and mean colony-specific fGCM levels. Clutch size and female fGCM were negatively correlated only under high nest predation and in females in good body condition, previously shown to have a longer life expectancy. We also found that younger females with longer telomeres had smaller clutches. The drop in hatching success with increasing fGCM levels was least pronounced under high nest predation risk, suggesting that elevated fGCM levels may allow females to ensure some reproductive success under such conditions. Hatching success was positively associated with female body condition, with relative telomere length, particularly in younger females, and with female minimum age, particularly under low predation risk, showing the utility of these metrics as indicators of individual quality. In line with a trade-off between current and future reproduction, our results show that high potential for future breeding prospects and increased predation risk shift the balance toward investment in future reproduction, with glucocorticoids playing a role in the resolution of this trade-off.


2009 ◽  
Vol 277 (1683) ◽  
pp. 963-969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie E. Marshall ◽  
Brent J. Sinclair

While insect cold tolerance has been well studied, the vast majority of work has focused on the effects of a single cold exposure. However, many abiotic environmental stresses, including temperature, fluctuate within an organism's lifespan. Given that organisms may trade-off survival at the cost of future reproduction, we investigated the effects of multiple cold exposures on survival and fertility in the model organism Drosophila melanogaster . We found that multiple cold exposures significantly decreased mortality compared with the same length of exposure in a single sustained bout, but significantly decreased fecundity (as measured by r , the intrinsic rate of increase) as well, owing to a shift in sex ratio. This change was reflected in a long-term decrease in glycogen stores in multiply exposed flies, while a brief effect on triglyceride stores was observed, suggesting flies are reallocating energy stores. Given that many environments are not static, this trade-off indicates that investigating the effects of repeated stress exposure is important for understanding and predicting physiological responses in the wild.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeeshan Ali Syed ◽  
Vanika Gupta ◽  
Manas Geeta Arun ◽  
Aatashi Dhiman ◽  
Bodhisatta Nandy ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. De Lisle

AbstractA well-known property of sexual selection combined with a cross sex genetic correlation (rmf), is that it can facilitate a peak shift on the adaptive landscape. How do these diversifying effects of sexual selection +rmf balance with the constraints imposed by such sexual antagonism, to affect macroevolution of sexual dimorphism? Here, I extend existing quantitative genetic models of evolution on complex adaptive landscapes. Beyond recovering classical predictions for the conditions promoting a peak shift, I show that when rmf is moderate to strong, relatively weak sexual selection is required to induce a peak shift in males only. Increasing the strength of sexual leads to a sexually-concordant peak shift, suggesting that macroevolutionary rates of sexual dimorphism may be largely decoupled from the strength of within-population sexual selection. Accounting explicitly for demography further reveals that sex-specific peak shifts may be more likely to be successful than concordant shifts in the face of extinction, especially when natural selection is strong. An overarching conclusion is that macroevolutionary patterns of sexual dimorphism are unlikely to be readily explained by within-population estimates of selection or constraint alone.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 20190869 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clémence Poirotte ◽  
Marie J. E. Charpentier

Several species mitigate relationships according to their conspecifics' parasite status. Yet, this defence strategy comes with the costs of depriving individuals from valuable social bonds. Animals therefore face a trade-off between the costs of pathogen exposure and the benefits of social relationships. According to the models of social evolution, social bonds are highly kin-biased. However, whether kinship mitigates social avoidance of contagious individuals has never been tested so far. Here, we build on previous research to demonstrate that mandrills ( Mandrillus sphinx ) modulate social avoidance of contagious individuals according to kinship: individuals do not avoid grooming their close maternal kin when contagious (parasitized with oro-faecally transmitted protozoa), although they do for more distant or non-kin. While individuals' parasite status has seldom been considered as a trait impacting social relationships in animals, this study goes a step beyond by showing that kinship balances the effect of health status on social behaviour in a non-human primate.


1997 ◽  
Vol 15 (10) ◽  
pp. 3192-3200 ◽  
Author(s):  
V A Palda ◽  
H A Llewellyn-Thomas ◽  
R G Mackenzie ◽  
K I Pritchard ◽  
C D Naylor

PURPOSE Along with evidence, clinical policies must take patients' values into account. Particularly where evidence is limited and where assumptions of utility-maximizing behavior may not be valid, new methods such as trade-off techniques (TOTs), which allow elicitation of patients' treatment alternatives, might be useful in policy formulation. We used TOTs to assess breast cancer patients' attitudes toward two clinical policies designed to ration adjuvant postlumpectomy breast radiation therapy. METHODS Cross-sectional interviews were performed in a tertiary cancer center. A total of 102 patients were presented with information about the side effects and benefits associated with two hypothetical decisions: (1) willingness to receive treatment elsewhere to shorten the wait for radiation therapy, and (2) foregoing radiation therapy in the face of small marginal benefits. For each scenario, a TOT was used to identify the maximal acceptable wait time (MAWT) for therapy and the benefit threshold at which the patient would forego therapy. Associations of clinical and demographic factors with these decisions were determined by regression analysis. RESULTS Patients would be willing to wait, on average, 7 weeks before wanting to leave their city for radiation therapy, less than the 13-week delay our patients actually faced. Older patients were less willing to wait (P = .013); 46% of patients would not give up radiation therapy, even in the face of no stated benefit. Willingness to give up radiation therapy was predicted by willingness to accept delay (odds ratio [OR], 1.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.05 to 3.37) and being employed (OR, 2.61; 95% CI, 1.08 to 6.54). Patients with larger tumors were less willing to give up radiation therapy (OR, 0.57; 95% CI, 0.31 to 0.97). CONCLUSION Even in difficult decisions such as rationing postlumpectomy breast cancer radiation therapy, TOTs can inform policy formulation by indicating the distributions of patients' preferences.


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