Lisa Chamberlin
Université du Québec à Montréal
M.Sc. candidate
Supervisor: Denis Réale
Superviseur principal : Jean-François Giroux
Start: 2019-09-03
End: 2021-12-31
M.Sc. candidate
Supervisor: Denis Réale
Superviseur principal : Jean-François Giroux
Start: 2019-09-03
End: 2021-12-31
Project
CONTRIBUTION OF PARENTAL INDIRECT GENETIC EFFECTS TO VARIATION IN MORPHOLOGICAL, BEHAVIORAL, AND LIFE HISTORY TRAITS IN CANADA GEESE.Social environment, particularly parents, play a key role in determining the expression of an individual's phenotype. Parental indirect genetic effects (IGEs) defined as the effects of parental genotypes on their offspring's phenotype beyond the inherited genes can affect the genetic variation and evolution of their offspring's traits. Despite the important roles of IGEs in evolutionary and ecological mechanisms, their influence in the wild remains greatly unknown. This study aimed to estimate and compare the contribution of parental IGEs to the genetic variation of two morphological, one behavioral, and four life-history traits. We used data from a wild population of Canada geese (Branta canadensis maxima) monitored for 18 years in southern Quebec (Canada). We found that parental IGEs had a greater influence on behavior than on morphological traits and negligible effects on life-history traits. However, coefficient of variation estimates for parental IGEs revealed that number of offspring, a life-history trait, was also influenced by parental genotypes. Our results highlight that parental IGEs can alter the expression of morphological, behavioral, and number of offspring traits and might therefore impact their evolution. Our findings also support the importance of considering coefficient of variation estimates to compare variances across traits. This study is the first to explicitly estimate parental IGEs on different types of traits in a wild population. Because a trait’s susceptibility to IGEs can lead to different evolutionary dynamics, our study helps understand the role of IGEs in the evolution of different types of traits.
