Cost, risk, and avoidance of inbreeding in a cooperatively breeding bird.

ABSTRACT: Inbreeding is often avoided in natural populations by passive processes such as sex-biased dispersal. But, in many social animals, opposite-sexed adult relatives are spatially clustered, generating a risk of incest and hence selection for active inbreeding avoidance. Here we show that, in long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus), a cooperative breeder that risks inbreeding by living alongside opposite-sex relatives, inbreeding carries fitness costs and is avoided by active kin discrimination during mate choice. First, we identified a positive association between heterozygosity and fitness, indicating that inbreeding is costly. We then compared relatedness within breeding pairs to that expected under multiple mate-choice models, finding that pair relatedness is consistent with avoidanc

SUBMITTER: Leedale AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7355050 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature