Both social and engineering factors must be further explored and scrutinized across the globe—as should notions of justice related to flooding impacts and responses.
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Edited by Joan E. Strassmann, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, and approved October 10, 2018 (received for review September 18, 2018)
Significance
How far individuals disperse from their birth site has profound consequences for the genetic structure of populations and for individual fitness, affecting the degree of gene flow between populations and the extent to which relatives and nonrelatives interact socially. Spatial clustering of kin arising from limited dispersal facilitates kin-selected cooperation and is considered an important step in the evolution of cooperative breeding. However, determination of the fitness consequences of dispersal in wild populations has proved extremely challenging. Here, we use data from a long-term study of long-tailed tits to quantify the fitness payoffs of dispersal. We show that females’ reproductive success increases with dispersal distance and that, for males, cooperation with kin generates fitness benefits that favor limited natal dispersal.
Abstract
Natal dispersal is a demographic trait with profound evolutionary, ecological, and behavioral consequences. However, our understanding of the adaptive value of dispersal patterns is severely hampered by the difficulty of measuring the relative fitness consequences of alternative dispersal strategies in natural populations. This is especially true in social species, in which natal philopatry allows kin selection to operate, so direct and indirect components of inclusive fitness have to be considered when evaluating selection on dispersal. Here, we use lifetime reproductive success data from a long-term study of a cooperative breeder, the long-tailed tit Aegithalos caudatus, to quantify the direct and indirect components of inclusive fitness. We show that dispersal has a negative effect on the accrual of indirect fitness, and hence inclusive fitness, by males. In contrast, the inclusive, predominantly direct, fitness of females increases with dispersal distance. We conclude that the conflicting fitness consequences of dispersal in this species result in sexually antagonistic selection on this key demographic parameter.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: jonathan.green{at}zoo.ox.ac.uk.
Author contributions: B.J.H. designed research; J.P.G. performed research; J.P.G. analyzed data; and J.P.G. and B.J.H. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1815873115/-/DCSupplemental.
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Inclusive fitness consequences of dispersal decisions in a cooperatively breeding bird, the long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus)
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