Vanden Broecke Bram, Bongers Aurelia, Mnyone Ladslaus, Matthysen Erik, Leirs Herwig
Evolutionary Ecology Group, Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
Pest Management Centre, Sokoine University of Agriculture, P.O.Box 3110 Chuo Kikuu, Morogoro, Tanzania.
Curr Zool. 2021 Feb;67(1):1-9. doi: 10.1093/cz/zoaa032. Epub 2020 Jun 26.
Consistent among-individual variation in behavior, or animal personality, is present in a wide variety of species. This behavioral variation is maintained by both genetic and environmental factors. Parental effects are a special case of environmental variation and are expected to evolve in populations experiencing large fluctuations in their environment. They represent a non-genetic pathway by which parents can transmit information to their offspring, by modulating their personality. While it is expected that parental effects contribute to the observed personality variation, this has rarely been studied in wild populations. We used the multimammate mouse as a model system to investigate the potential effects of maternal personality on offspring behavior. We did this by repeatedly recording the behavior of individually housed juveniles which were born and raised in the lab from wild caught females. A linear correlation, between mother and offspring in behavior, would be expected when the personality is only affected by additive genetic variation, while a more complex relationship would suggests the presence of maternal effects. We found that the personality of the mother predicted the behavior of their offspring in a non-linear pattern. Exploration behavior of mother and offspring was positively correlated, but only for slow and average exploring mothers, while this correlation became negative for fast exploring mothers. This may suggests that early maternal effects could affect personality in juvenile , potentially due to density-dependent and negative frequency-dependent mechanisms, and therefore contribute to the maintenance of personality variation.
行为方面一致的个体间差异，即动物个性，存在于各种各样的物种中。这种行为差异由遗传和环境因素共同维持。亲代效应是环境变异的一种特殊情况，预计会在经历环境大幅波动的种群中进化。它们代表了一种非遗传途径，通过这种途径，父母可以通过调节后代的个性将信息传递给他们。虽然预计亲代效应会导致观察到的个性差异，但在野生种群中对此很少进行研究。我们使用多乳鼠作为模型系统来研究母体个性对后代行为的潜在影响。我们通过反复记录单独饲养的幼崽的行为来做到这一点，这些幼崽由在实验室中捕获的野生雌性生育并抚养长大。当个性仅受加性遗传变异影响时，预计母亲和后代在行为上会存在线性相关，而更复杂的关系则表明存在亲代效应。我们发现母亲的个性以非线性模式预测其后代的行为。母亲和后代的探索行为呈正相关，但仅对于探索速度慢和中等的母亲而言，而对于探索速度快的母亲，这种相关性变为负相关。这可能表明早期亲代效应可能会影响幼崽的个性，这可能是由于密度依赖和负频率依赖机制，因此有助于维持个性差异。
