Consistently high multiple paternity rates in five wild boar populations despite varying hunting pressures

Abstract

Intraspecific variations in mating systems have been reported in numerous species, especially when they live in varying ecological contexts. This leads to variability between populations with regard to the proportion of females engaging in multiple male mating, which depends on the number of males available. For hunted ungulate species, hunting is known to influence population structure, especially when males are preferentially targeted for trophy hunting. Here, we investigated how variations in hunting pressure and the yearly proportion of heavy males removed have impacted multiple paternity rates in five wild boar (Sus scrofa scrofa) populations located in similar ecological contexts. We found high rates of multiple paternity in all studied populations, confirming the recently reported promiscuous mating system of wild boar. However, variations in hunting pressure and removal of heavy males did not significantly influence multiple paternity rates, contrary to our expectation. Nonetheless, a slight tendency for a decreasing multiple paternity rate with increasing hunting pressure and for increasing multiple paternity rate with increasing removal of heavy males from the population was detected. Based on these results, we discuss an alternative hypothesis on the ecological processes sustaining the influence of hunting regimes on the mating system. Overall, hunting pressure and management rules might be sufficient to disrupt the mating system in any of the populations, so it is important to continue the sampling of wild boar populations at the European scale, especially in populations with little hunting pressure.