0000000000397069
AUTHOR
Rémi Chargé
Male health status, signalled by courtship display, reveals ejaculate quality and hatching success in a lekking species.
8 pages; International audience; Summary 1. The information content of secondary sexual traits and the benefits gathered by choosy females are at the heart of sexual selection theory. Indicator models of sexual selection assume that secondary sexual traits reflect the phenotypic/genetic quality of their bearers and that females gather benefits from choosing these high-quality males. 2. Here, we tested the idea that courtship display reflects the health status in a bird species with a lek-based mating system, the houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata undulata). A group of males was treated with the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of the cell wall of the bacterium Escherichia coli during the seasona…
Variation in male fertility in a polymorphic moth, Parasemia plantaginis
The maintenance of multiple morphs in warning signals is enigmatic because directional selection through predator avoidance should lead to the rapid loss of such variation. Opposing natural and sexual selection is a good candidate driving the maintenance of multiple male morphs but it also includes another enigma: when warning signal efficiency differs between male morphs, why would females choose a phenotype with lower survival? We tested the hypothesis that indirect responses to selection on correlated characters through sexual selection may substantially shape the evolution of male coloration. If male phenotypes differ in their fertilization ability, female choice against the best surviv…
Quantitative genetics of sexual display, ejaculate quality and size in a lekking species.
9 pages; International audience; The investment into extravagant sexual display and competitive sperm are two essential components of pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection. Even though the selective forces acting on sexual display and sperm characteristics have been extensively studied in recent years, the genetic architecture underlying the expression of these traits has been rarely explored. Here, we estimated the genetic variances and covariances of traits linked with ejaculate size and quality, and sexual display in the houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata undulata, Jacquin 1784). Using a very large pedigree-based data set, we show that sexual signalling and ejaculate size (but not…
Can sexual selection theory inform genetic management of captive populations? A review
International audience; Captive breeding for conservation purposes presents a serious practical challenge because several conflicting genetic processes (i.e., inbreeding depression, random genetic drift and genetic adaptation to captivity) need to be managed in concert to maximize captive population persistence and reintroduction success probability. Because current genetic management is often only partly successful in achieving these goals, it has been suggested that management insights may be found in sexual selection theory (in particular, female mate choice). We review the theoretical and empirical literature and consider how female mate choice might influence captive breeding in the co…
Impacts of agricultural intensification on bird communities: New insights from a multi-level and multi-facet approach of biodiversity
International audience; Following the multiplicity of studies dealing with the effects of agricultural intensification on bird diversity, one of the lessons drawn is that these effects depend on both the taxonomic group, the component of diversity, the aspect of intensification, and the spatial scale. This often leads to disparate results among studies suggesting that the investigation of agriculture-biodiversity relationships suffers from scale-dependence, information redundancy, non-linearity problems, and thus, unpredictability.Here, we propose a multi-scale and multi-facet approach to clarify the impacts of agricultural intensification on biodiversity and possible mitigating actions. Ou…
Does recognized genetic management in supportive breeding prevent genetic changes in life-history traits?
International audience; Supportive breeding is one of the last resort conservation strategies to avoid species extinction. Management of captive populations is challenging because several harmful genetic processes need to be avoided. Several recommendations have been proposed to limit these deleterious effects, but empirical assessments of these strategies remain scarce. We investigated the outcome of a genetic management in a supportive breeding for the Houbara Bustard. At the phenotypic level, we found an increase over generations in the mean values of gamete production, body mass and courtship display rate. Using an animal model, we found that phenotypic changes reflected genetic changes…
Pesticide doses, landscape structure and their relative effects on farmland birds
International audience; tAgricultural changes related to the intensification of farming practices and the simplification of land-scape elements often occur simultaneously. Their respective effects on biodiversity are thus difficult todisentangle and are poorly understood. This study assessed the relative contribution of each componentof agricultural intensification on taxonomic and functional bird communities.The bird communities studied were composed of 70 species, both farmland and non-farmland birds,found in 66 fields covering three main cereal departments of France. Herbicide dose was related to mea-surable negative effects on the Community Specialization Index (CSI). Overall, the propo…
Immune-mediated change in the expression of a sexual trait predicts offspring survival in the wild.
9 pages; International audience; BACKGROUND: The "good genes" theory of sexual selection postulates that females choose mates that will improve their offspring's fitness through the inheritance of paternal genes. In spite of the attention that this hypothesis has given rise to, the empirical evidence remains sparse, mostly because of the difficulties of controlling for the many environmental factors that may covary with both the paternal phenotype and offspring fitness. Here, we tested the hypothesis that offspring sired by males of a preferred phenotype should have better survival in an endangered bird, the houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata undulata). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We…
Data from: Does recognized genetic management in supportive breeding prevent genetic changes in life-history traits?
Supportive breeding is one of the last resort conservation strategies to avoid species extinction. Management of captive populations is challenging because several harmful genetic processes need to be avoided. Several recommendations have been proposed to limit these deleterious effects, but empirical assessments of these strategies remain scarce. We investigated the outcome of a genetic management in a supportive breeding for the Houbara Bustard. At the phenotypic level, we found an increase over generations in the mean values of gamete production, body mass and courtship display rate. Using an animal model, we found that phenotypic changes reflected genetic changes as evidenced by an incr…