Multiple aspects of the maternal reproductive investmentin a polytocous species:What do mothers really control?  

作　　者：Rudy Brogi Roberta Chirichella Enrico Merli Marco Apollonio 

机构地区：[1]Department of Veterinary Medicine,University of Sassari,via Vienna 2,I-07100 Sassari,Italy [2]Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,University of Sassari,via Roma 151,I-07100 Sassari,Italy

出　　处：《Current Zoology》2023年第2期136-142,共7页动物学报（英文版）

基　　金：The Provincial Administration of Arezzo and the Italian Ministry of Education,University and Research(PRIN 2010-2011,20108 TZKHC);financially and logistically supported the research.M.A.was financed by the Fondo di Ateneo per la Ricerca 2020'of the University of Sassari.

摘　　要：One of the factors facilitating the expansion and proliferation of wild boar Sus scrofa is the plasticity of its reproductive biology.Nevertheless,the real influence of maternal and environmental factors on number and sex of the offspring is stll controversial.While the litter size was shown to be related with the maternal condition,the strength of this relation remains to be understood,together with the possible role played by environmental conditions.Analogously,it is unclear whether wild boar females can adjust their offspring sex.We investigated multiple aspects of wild boar maternal investment by means of a 10-year dataset of female reproductive traits and a set of biologically meaningful environmental variables.The maternal condition slightly affected the litter size but not the offspring sex,and environment did not affect the litter size or the offspring sex.Moreover,mothers did not cope with the higher costs entailed by producing sons by placing them in the most advantageous intrauterine position,nor by allocating less resources on daughters.Our set of results showed that the female reproductive investment is quite rigid in comparison with other aspects of wild boar reproductive biology.Wild boar females seem to adopt a typical rstrategy,producing constantly large litters and allocating resources on both sexes regardless of internal and external conditions.Such strategy may be adaptive to cope with environmental unpredictability and an intense human harvest,contributing to explain the extreme success of wild boar within human-dominated landscapes.

关 键 词：INVESTMENT life history litter size REPRODUCTION sex allocation wild boar 

分 类 号：Q95[生物学—动物学]