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The effects of resource availability and the demographic transition on the genetic correlation between number of children and grandchildren in humans.

ABSTRACT: Studies of evolutionary change require an estimate of fitness, and lifetime reproductive success is widely used for this purpose. However, many species face a trade-off between the number and quality of offspring and in such cases number of grandoffspring may better represent the genetic contribution to future generations. Here, we apply quantitative genetic methods to a genealogical data set on humans from Finland to address how the genetic correlation between number of children and grandchildren is influenced by the severity of the trade-off between offspring quality and quantity, as estimated by different levels of resource access among individuals in the population. Further, we compare the genetic correlation before and after the demographic transition to low mortality and fertility rates. The genetic correlation was consistently high (0.79-0.92) with the strongest correlations occurring in individuals with higher access to resources and before the demographic transition, and a tendency for lower correlations in resource poor individuals and after the transition. These results indicate that number of grandoffspring is a slightly better predictor of long-term genetic fitness than number of offspring in a human population across a range of environmental conditions, and more generally, that patterns of resource availability need to be taken into account when estimating genetic covariances with fitness.

SUBMITTER: Bolund E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5234483 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The effects of resource availability and the demographic transition on the genetic correlation between number of children and grandchildren in humans.

Bolund E E Lummaa V V

Heredity 20160914 2

Studies of evolutionary change require an estimate of fitness, and lifetime reproductive success is widely used for this purpose. However, many species face a trade-off between the number and quality of offspring and in such cases number of grandoffspring may better represent the genetic contribution to future generations. Here, we apply quantitative genetic methods to a genealogical data set on humans from Finland to address how the genetic correlation between number of children and grandchildr ...[more]

PMID: 27624115

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Project description:Population dynamics predicts that on average parents should invest equally in male and female offspring; similarly, the physiology of mammalian sex determination is supposedly stochastic, producing equal numbers of sons and daughters. However, a high quality parent can maximize fitness by biasing their birth sex ratio (SR) to the sex with the greatest potential to disproportionately outperform peers. All SR manipulation theories share a fundamental prediction: grandparents who bias birth SR should produce more grandoffspring via the favored sex. The celebrated examples of biased birth SRs in nature consistent with SR manipulation theories provide compelling circumstantial evidence. However, this prediction has never been directly tested in mammals, primarily because the complete three-generation pedigrees needed to test whether individual favored offspring produce more grandoffspring for the biasing grandparent are essentially impossible to obtain in nature. Three-generation pedigrees were constructed using 90 years of captive breeding records from 198 mammalian species. Male and female grandparents consistently biased their birth SR toward the sex that maximized second-generation success. The most strongly male-biased granddams and grandsires produced respectively 29% and 25% more grandoffspring than non-skewing conspecifics. The sons of the most male-biasing granddams were 2.7 times as fecund as those of granddams with a 50∶50 bias (similar results are seen in grandsires). Daughters of the strongest female-biasing granddams were 1.2 times as fecund as those of non-biasing females (this effect is not seen in grandsires). To our knowledge, these results are the first formal test of the hypothesis that birth SR manipulation is adaptive in mammals in terms of grandchildren produced, showing that SR manipulation can explain biased birth SR in general across mammalian species. These findings also have practical implications: parental control of birth SR has the potential to accelerate genetic loss and risk of extinction within captive populations of endangered species.

Project description:The degree of gene flow within and among populations, i.e. genetic population connectivity, may closely track demographic population connectivity. Alternatively, the rate of gene flow may change relative to the rate of dispersal. In this study, we explored the relationship between genetic and demographic population connectivity using the Scandinavian brown bear as model species, due to its pronounced male dispersal and female philopatry. Thus, we expected that females would shape genetic structure locally, whereas males would act as genetic mediators among regions. To test this, we used eight validated microsatellite markers on 1531 individuals sampled noninvasively during country-wide genetic population monitoring in Sweden and Norway from 2006 to 2013. First, we determined sex-specific genetic structure and substructure across the study area. Second, we compared genetic differentiation, migration/gene flow patterns, and spatial autocorrelation results between the sexes both within and among genetic clusters and geographic regions. Our results indicated that demographic connectivity was not a reliable indicator of genetic connectivity. Among regions, we found no consistent difference in long-term gene flow and estimated current migration rates between males and females. Within regions/genetic clusters, only females consistently displayed significant positive spatial autocorrelation, indicating male-biased small-scale dispersal. In one cluster, however, males showed a dispersal pattern similar to females. The Scandinavian brown bear population has experienced substantial recovery over the last decades; however, our results did not show any changes in its large-scale population structure compared to previous studies, suggesting that an increase in population size and dispersal of individuals does not necessary lead to increased genetic connectivity. Thus, we conclude that both genetic and demographic connectivity should be estimated, so as not to make false assumptions about the reality of wildlife populations.

Dataset Information

The effects of resource availability and the demographic transition on the genetic correlation between number of children and grandchildren in humans.

Publications

The effects of resource availability and the demographic transition on the genetic correlation between number of children and grandchildren in humans.

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