Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Biological and Chemical Research Centre, Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.
Mol Ecol. 2024 Sep;33(17):e17481. doi: 10.1111/mec.17481. Epub 2024 Jul 23.
Urbanisation has been increasing worldwide in recent decades, driving environmental change and exerting novel selective pressures on wildlife. Phenotypic differences between urban and rural individuals have been widely documented in several taxa. However, the extent to which urbanisation impacts mating strategies is less known. Here, we investigated extra-pair paternity variation in great tits (Parus major) and blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) breeding in nestboxes set in a gradient of urbanisation in Warsaw, Poland, over three breeding seasons. Urbanisation was quantified as the amount of light pollution, noise pollution, impervious surface area (ISA) and tree cover within a 100-m radius around each nestbox. We obtained genotypes for 1213 great tits at 7344 SNP markers and for 1299 blue tits at 9366 SNP markers with a genotyping-by-sequencing method, and inferred extra-pair paternity by computing a genomewide relatedness matrix. We report higher extra-pair paternity in blue tits breeding in more urbanised areas, for example, with higher light pollution and ISA, and lower tree cover. However, no such trend was found in great tits. Late-stage survival of individual nestlings in both species was not associated with paternity or urbanisation proxies, thus we were not able to detect fitness benefits or drawbacks of being an extra-pair offspring in relation to urbanisation. Our results contribute to the growing body of knowledge reporting on the effects of urbanisation on avian ecology and behaviour, and confirm species-specific and population-specific patterns of extra-pair paternity variation.
城市化进程在最近几十年在全球范围内不断加速，推动了环境变化，并对野生动物产生了新的选择压力。在多个分类群中，已广泛记录了城乡个体之间的表型差异。然而，城市化对交配策略的影响程度知之甚少。在这里，我们调查了在波兰华沙的巢箱中繁殖的大山雀（Parus major）和蓝山雀（Cyanistes caeruleus）的额外配对父权变异，这些巢箱位于城市化程度的梯度中，历时三个繁殖季节。城市化程度通过在每个巢箱周围 100 米半径内的光污染、噪音污染、不透水表面面积（ISA）和树冠覆盖量来量化。我们使用测序方法获得了 1213 只大山雀在 7344 个 SNP 标记和 1299 只蓝山雀在 9366 个 SNP 标记的基因型，并通过计算全基因组亲缘关系矩阵来推断额外配对的父权。我们报告说，在城市化程度较高的地区，例如光污染和 ISA 较高，树木覆盖较低的地区，蓝山雀的额外配对父权更高。然而，在大山雀中没有发现这种趋势。两种物种的单个雏鸟的后期存活率与父权或城市化代理无关，因此我们无法检测到在城市化方面作为额外配对后代的适应性收益或弊端。我们的研究结果为报告城市化对鸟类生态和行为的影响的不断增长的知识体系做出了贡献，并证实了额外配对父权变异的物种特异性和种群特异性模式。
