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Evolution should render individuals resistant to stress and particularly to stress experienced by ancestors. However, many studies report negative effects of stress experienced by one generation on the performance of subsequent generations. To assess the strength of such transgenerational effects we propose a strategy aimed at overcoming the problem of type I errors when testing multiple proxies of...
Why do females of socially monogamous species engage in extra‐pair copulations? This long‐standing question remains a puzzle, because the benefits of female promiscuous behavior often do not seem to outweigh the costs. Genetic constraint models offer an answer by proposing that female promiscuity emerges through selection favoring alleles that are either beneficial for male reproductive success (intersexual...
Many fields of science—including behavioral ecology—currently experience a heated debate about the extent to which publication bias against null findings results in a misrepresentative scientific literature. Here, we show a case of an extreme mismatch between strong positive support for an effect in the literature and a failure to detect this effect across multiple attempts at replication. For decades,...
Studies of mate choice typically assume that individuals prefer high quality mates and select them based on condition‐dependent indicator traits. In species with biparental care, mutual mate choice is expected to result in assortative mating for quality. When assortment is not perfect, the lower quality pair members are expected to compensate by increased parental investment to secure their partner...
Males of socially monogamous species can increase their siring success via within‐pair and extra‐pair fertilizations. In this study, we focused on the different sources of (co)variation between these siring routes, and asked how each contributes to total siring success. We quantified the fertilization routes to siring success, as well as behaviors that have been hypothesized to affect siring success,...
The contribution of extra‐pair paternity (EPP) to sexual selection has received considerable attention, particularly in socially monogamous species. However, the importance of EPP remains difficult to assess quantitatively, especially when many extra‐pair young have unknown sires. Here, we combine measurements of the opportunity for selection (I), the opportunity for sexual selection (IS), and the...
Mate choice based on sexual ornaments can impose strong selection, which raises the question of how genetic variation in ornaments is maintained. One mechanism that has been proposed is genic capture. If ornament expression is influenced by general condition and condition is under polygenic control, selection will be inefficient in removing genetic variation. Here we analyze whether the genetic architecture...
To understand the mechanisms behind heterozygosity‐fitness correlations (HFC), it is necessary to employ large numbers of markers with known function and independently estimate the variation in inbreeding in the population. Here we genotyped 794 blue tits with 79 microsatellites that were distributed across 25 chromosomes and that were classified either as “functional” (N= 58) or “neutral” (N= 21)...
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