63 Oral - Keynote #4 (Session Chairs) and Awards
Friday June 10, 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Indirect genetic effects across life cycle stages in a cooperatively breeding bird


Authors:
Gladiana Spitz 2; Elissa Cosgrove 3; Reed Bowman 4; John Fitzpatrick 3; Andrew Clark 3; Nancy Chen 1

Affiliations:
1) University of Rochester, Rochester, NY; 2) University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO; 3) Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; 4) Archbold Biological Station, Venus, FL

Keywords:
Genetic interactions

Indirect genetic effects, which occur when an individual's phenotype is influenced by the genotype of another conspecific individual, are an often-overlooked yet potentially important factor impacting phenotypic variation in natural populations. In many organisms, interactions between parents and offspring can have widespread consequences on offspring traits and fitness. Most indirect genetic effects studies to date have focused on estimating maternal effects, even though males also care for offspring in many species. Furthermore, the strength of maternal and paternal effects is expected to vary for different offspring traits, and few studies have investigated the ontogeny of paternal effects. Here, we estimated the environmental and genetic effects of maternal, paternal, and helper care on offspring survival and body condition at different life stages in an intensively-studied population of cooperatively breeding Florida Scrub-Jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens). Using an animal model approach, we found that the strength of maternal and paternal effects decrease with offspring age, but the pattern differs for helper effects. Paternal effects are higher than maternal effects for early nestling survival, which is consistent with variation in provisioning behavior. We also estimate the effects of non-transmitted parental alleles and incorporate parental genotypes in genome-wide association studies of different fitness components to disentangle direct effects from indirect effects. Our study highlights the importance of broadening the consideration of indirect genetic effects beyond maternal effects when studying the evolution of offspring traits and performing genotype-phenotype associations.