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Effects of maternal investment, temperament, and cognition on guide dog success.

ABSTRACT: A continuing debate in studies of social development in both humans and other animals is the extent to which early life experiences affect adult behavior. Also unclear are the relative contributions of cognitive skills ("intelligence") and temperament for successful outcomes. Guide dogs are particularly suited to research on these questions. To succeed as a guide dog, individuals must accomplish complex navigation and decision making without succumbing to distractions and unforeseen obstacles. Faced with these rigorous demands, only ?70% of dogs that enter training ultimately achieve success. What predicts success as a guide dog? To address these questions, we followed 98 puppies from birth to adulthood. We found that high levels of overall maternal behavior were linked with a higher likelihood of program failure. Furthermore, mothers whose nursing style required greater effort by puppies were more likely to produce successful offspring, whereas mothers whose nursing style required less effort were more likely to produce offspring that failed. In young adults, an inability to solve a multistep task quickly, compounded with high levels of perseveration during the task, was associated with failure. Young adults that were released from the program also appeared more anxious, as indicated by a short latency to vocalize when faced with a novel object task. Our results suggest that both maternal nursing behavior and individual traits of cognition and temperament are associated with guide dog success.

SUBMITTER: Bray EE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5576795 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of maternal investment, temperament, and cognition on guide dog success.

Bray Emily E EE Sammel Mary D MD Cheney Dorothy L DL Serpell James A JA Seyfarth Robert M RM

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20170807 34

A continuing debate in studies of social development in both humans and other animals is the extent to which early life experiences affect adult behavior. Also unclear are the relative contributions of cognitive skills ("intelligence") and temperament for successful outcomes. Guide dogs are particularly suited to research on these questions. To succeed as a guide dog, individuals must accomplish complex navigation and decision making without succumbing to distractions and unforeseen obstacles. F ...[more]

PMID: 28784785

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Project description:The hatching success of a bird's egg is one of the key determinants of avian reproductive success, which may be compromised by microbial infections causing embryonic death. During incubation, outer eggshell bacterial communities pose a constant threat of pathogen translocation and embryo infection. One of the parental strategies to mitigate this threat is the incorporation of maternal immune factors into the egg albumen and yolk. It has been suggested that habitat changes like forest fragmentation can affect environmental factors and life-history traits that are linked to egg contamination. This study aims at investigating relationships between microbial pressure, immune investment and hatching success in two abundant forest bird species and analyzing to what extent these are driven by extrinsic (environmental) factors. We here compared (1) the bacterial load and composition on eggshells, (2) the level of immune defenses in eggs, and (3) the reproductive success between great (Parus major) and blue (Cyanistes caeruleus) tits in Belgium and examined if forest fragmentation affects these parameters. Analysis of 70 great tit and 34 blue tit eggshells revealed a similar microbiota composition (Enterobacteriaceae, Lactobacillus spp., Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes), but higher bacterial loads in great tits. Forest fragmentation was not identified as an important explanatory variable. Although a significant negative correlation between hatching success and bacterial load on the eggshells in great tits corroborates microbial pressure to be a driver of embryonic mortality, the overall hatching success was only marginally lower than in blue tits. This may be explained by the significantly higher levels of lysozyme and IgY in the eggs of great tits, protecting the embryo from increased infection pressure. Our results show that immune investment in eggs is suggested to be a species-specific adaptive trait that serves to protect hatchlings from pathogen pressure, which is not directly linked to habitat fragmentation.

Project description:BackgroundDemonstrating the impact that parents have on the fitness of their children is a crucial step towards understanding how parental investment has affected human evolution. Parents not only transfer genes to their children, they also influence their environments. By analyzing reproductive patterns within and between different categories of close relatives, this study provides insight into the genetic and environmental effects that parents have on the fitness of their offspring.MethodsWe use data spanning over two centuries from an exceptionally accurate Icelandic genealogy, Íslendingabók, to analyze the relationship between the fertility rates of close relatives. Also, using genetic data, we determine narrow sense heritability estimates (h2) to further explore the genetic impact on lifetime reproductive success. Finally, we construct four simulations to model the expected contribution of genes and resources on reproductive success.ResultsThe relationship between the reproduction of all full sibling pairs was significant and positive across all birth decades (r = 0.19) while the reproductive relationship between parents and offspring was often negative across many decades and undetectable overall (r = 0.00) (Fig. 1 and Table 1). Meanwhile, genetic data among 8,456 pairs of full siblings revealed a narrow sense heritability estimate (h2) of 0.00 for lifetime reproductive success. A resources model (following the rule that resources are transmitted from parents to children, distributed equally among siblings, and are the only factor affecting reproductive success) revealed a similar trend: a negative relationship between parent and offspring reproduction (r = - 0.35) but a positive relationship among full siblings (r = 0.28). The relationship between parent and offspring lifetime reproductive success (LRS) and full sibling LRS was strongly and positively correlated across time (r = 0.799, p < 0.001). Similarly, the LRS among full siblings was positively correlated with both the LRS among half siblings (r = 0.532, p = 0.011) and the relationship between the LRS of aunts and uncles with their nieces and nephews (r = 0.438, p = 0.042).DiscussionWe show that an individual's lifetime reproductive success is best predicted by the reproduction of their full and half siblings, but not their parents, grandparents or aunts and uncles. Because all siblings share at least one parent, we believe parental investment has had an important impact on fitness. Overall, these results indicate that direct parental investment, but not genes, is likely to have had an important and persistent impact on lifetime reproductive success across more than two centuries of Icelandic history.

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Effects of maternal investment, temperament, and cognition on guide dog success.

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Effects of maternal investment, temperament, and cognition on guide dog success.

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