Search results for "Offspring"
showing 10 items of 395 documents
Effect of delayed breeding on the reproductive performance of female mice
2003
The aim of the present study was to determine, in the mouse, whether maintaining females as virgins until an advanced reproductive age was associated with decreased reproductive performance and reproductive lifespan compared with females of the same age that were first mated with males at an earlier reproductive age. Randomly selected virgin hybrid (C57BL/6JIco female × CBA/JIco male) female mice were housed individually with a randomly selected 12- to 14-week-old hybrid male either at the age of 28 weeks (normal breeding group; n = 20) or 51 weeks (delayed breeding group; n = 23) for the rest of their reproductive life. Females were checked once daily to determine the day of parturition an…
Prenatal exposure to the CB1 receptor agonist WIN 55,212-2 causes learning disruption associated with impaired cortical NMDA receptor function and em…
2005
The aim of this study was to investigate whether prenatal exposure to the cannabinoid CB1 receptor agonist WIN 55,212-2 (WIN) at a daily dose devoid of overt signs of toxicity and/or gross malformations (0.5 mg/kg, gestation days 5-20), influences cortical glutamatergic neurotransmission, learning and emotional reactivity in rat offspring. Basal and K+-evoked extracellular glutamate levels were significantly lower in cortical cell cultures obtained from pups exposed to WIN during gestation with respect to those measured in cultures obtained from neonates born from vehicle-treated dams. The addition of NMDA to cortical cell cultures from neonates born from vehicle-treated dams concentration-…
Maternal and fetal genetic effects on birth weight and their relevance to cardio-metabolic risk factors
2019
AbstractBirth weight (BW) variation is influenced by fetal and maternal genetic and non-genetic factors, and has been reproducibly associated with future cardio-metabolic health outcomes. These associations have been proposed to reflect the lifelong consequences of an adverse intrauterine environment. In earlier work, we demonstrated that much of the negative correlation between BW and adult cardio-metabolic traits could instead be attributable to shared genetic effects. However, that work and other previous studies did not systematically distinguish the direct effects of an individual’s own genotype on BW and subsequent disease risk from indirect effects of their mother’s correlated genoty…
Prenatal Omega-6:Omega-3 Ratio and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms
2019
Supported by the Spanish Institute of Health Carlos III (Co-funded by European Regional Development Fund “A way to make Europe”) (CP14/00108, PI16/00261, MS14/00108 [to J.J.]), the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca, Generalitat de Catalunya - Fons Social Europeu (2017 FI_B 00636 [to N.V-T.]), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC-2012-10995 [to P.D.] and RYC-2011-08796 [to D.R.]), Obra Social Cajastur/Fundación Liberbank, Universidad de Oviedo, CIBERESP, Department of Health of the Basque Government, the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa, the municipalities of the study area (Zumarraga, Urretxu, Legazpi, Azkoitia y Azpeitia y Beasain), Generalitat Valenciana…
Transcriptomes of parents identify parenting strategies and sexual conflict in a subsocial beetle
2015
This work was funded by UK NERC grants to M.G.R. and A.J.M. an NERC studentship to D.J.P. the University of Georgia and a US NSF grant to A.J.M. and M.G.R. Parenting in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides is complex and, unusually, the sex and number of parents that can be present is flexible. Such flexibility is expected to involve specialized behaviour by the two sexes under biparental conditions. Here, we show that offspring fare equally well regardless of the sex or number of parents present. Comparing transcriptomes, we find a largely overlapping set of differentially expressed genes in both uniparental and biparental females and in uniparental males including vitellogenin, ass…
Sibling cooperation in earwig families provides insights into the early evolution of social life.
2014
The evolutionary transition from solitary to social life is driven by direct and indirect fitness benefits of social interactions. Understanding the conditions promoting the early evolution of social life therefore requires identification of these benefits in nonderived social systems, such as animal families where offspring are mobile and able to disperse and will survive independently. Family life is well known to provide benefits to offspring through parental care, but research on sibling interactions generally focused on fitness costs to offspring due to competitive behaviors. Here we show experimentally that sibling interactions also reflect cooperative behaviors in the form of food sh…
Consequences on offspring of abnormal function in ageing gametes.
2000
The present review aims to analyse (i) the molecular, biochemical and cellular changes that accompany oocyte and sperm ageing in any of the internal or external environments where they can reside, and (ii) the consequences of the abnormal function in ageing gametes on pre- and post-implantation development and later life of offspring. This review also aims to propose and discuss cellular/molecular mechanisms framed within the 'free radical theory of ageing'. It appears that the ageing of gametes prior to fertilization may affect many molecular, biochemical and cellular pathways that may jeopardize not only pre- and post-implantation embryo/fetal development but also later life of offspring.…
Sex-specific differences in offspring personalities across the laying order in magpies Pica pica
2013
Maternal effects provide an important mechanism for mothers to create variation in offspring personality, and to potentially influence offspring life history strategies e.g. creating more/less dispersive phenotypes. However, within-clutch maternal effects often vary and hence there is potential for within-clutch variation in personality. We studied the effects of hatching order on explorative and neophobic behaviour of the magpies Pica pica in relation to sex using novel environment and novel object experiments. Hatching order did affect explorative behaviour in magpie, but did so in opposite directions for either sex. First-hatched females were more explorative and had a tendency to be les…
Long-term fitness benefits of polyandry in a small mammal, the bank vole Clethrionomys glareolus.
2008
Polyandry, i.e. mating with multiple males within one reproductive event, is a common female mating strategy but its adaptive function is often unclear. We tested whether polyandrous females gain genetic benefits by comparing fitness traits of monandrous (mated twice with a single male) and polyandrous (mated twice with two different males) female bank volesClethrionomys glareolus. We raised the offspring in the laboratory until adulthood and measured their body size, before releasing them to outdoor enclosures to overwinter. At the onset of the breeding season in the following spring, we found that offspring of polyandrous females performed significantly better at reproduction than those o…
HORMONAL MANIPULATION OF OFFSPRING NUMBER: MATERNAL EFFORT AND REPRODUCTIVE COSTS
2002
We used exogenous gonadotropin hormones to physiologically enlarge litter size in the bank vole (Clethrionomys glareolus). This method allowed the study design to include possible production costs of reproduction and a trade-off between offspring number and body size at birth. Furthermore, progeny rearing and survival and postpartum survival of the females took place in outdoor enclosures to capture salient naturalistic effects that might be present during the fall and early winter. The aim of the study was to assess the effects of the manipulation on the growth and survival of the offspring and on the reproductive effort, survival, and future fecundity of the mothers. Mean offspring body s…