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Genetic and environmental variation in condition, cutaneous immunity, and haematocrit in house wrens

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Ecology and Evolution, December 2014
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Title
Genetic and environmental variation in condition, cutaneous immunity, and haematocrit in house wrens
Published in
BMC Ecology and Evolution, December 2014
DOI 10.1186/s12862-014-0242-8
Pubmed ID
Authors

Scott K Sakaluk, Alastair J Wilson, E Keith Bowers, L Scott Johnson, Brian S Masters, Bonnie GP Johnson, Laura A Vogel, Anna M Forsman, Charles F Thompson

Abstract

BackgroundLife-history studies of wild bird populations often focus on the relationship between an individual¿s condition and its capacity to mount an immune response, as measured by a commonly-employed assay of cutaneous immunity, the PHA skin test. In addition, haematocrit, the packed cell volume in relation to total blood volume, is often measured as an indicator of physiological performance. A multi-year study of a wild population of house wrens has recently revealed that those exhibiting the highest condition and strongest PHA responses as nestlings are most likely to be recruited to the breeding population and to breed through two years of age; in contrast, intermediate haematocrit values result in the highest recruitment to the population. Selection theory would predict, therefore, that most of the underlying genetic variation in these traits should be exhausted resulting in low heritability, although such traits may also exhibit low heritability because of increased residual variance. Here, we examine the genetic and environmental variation in condition, cutaneous immunity, and haematocrit using an animal model based on a pedigree of approximately 2,800 house wrens.ResultsEnvironmental effects played a paramount role in shaping the expression of the fitness-related traits measured in this wild population, but two of them, condition and haematocrit, retained significant heritable variation. Condition was also positively correlated with both the PHA response and haematocrit, but in the absence of any significant genetic correlations, it appears that this covariance arises through parallel effects of the environment acting on this suite of traits.ConclusionsThe maintenance of genetic variation in different measures of condition appears to be a pervasive feature of wild bird populations, in contradiction of conventional selection theory. A major challenge in future studies will be to explain how such variation persists in the face of the directional selection acting on condition in house wrens and other species.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 49 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 1 2%
Italy 1 2%
Canada 1 2%
Unknown 46 94%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 11 22%
Student > Ph. D. Student 9 18%
Researcher 7 14%
Student > Doctoral Student 5 10%
Other 3 6%
Other 5 10%
Unknown 9 18%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 28 57%
Environmental Science 4 8%
Medicine and Dentistry 2 4%
Psychology 1 2%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 1 2%
Other 0 0%
Unknown 13 27%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 September 2015.
All research outputs
#22,759,802
of 25,374,917 outputs
Outputs from BMC Ecology and Evolution
#3,511
of 3,714 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#314,345
of 368,057 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Ecology and Evolution
#69
of 72 outputs
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