Abstract
Dispersal can be divided into three stages: departure, transience and settlement. Despite the fact that theoretical studies have emphasized the importance of heterozygosity on dispersal strategies, empirical evidence of its effect on different stages of dispersal is lacking. Here, using multi-event capture-mark-recapture models, we show a negative association between microsatellite multilocus heterozygosity (MLH; 10 loci; n = 1023) and post-fledging dispersal propensity for greater flamingos, Phoenicopterus roseus, born in southern France. We propose that the negative effects of inbreeding depression affects competitive ability and therefore more homozygous individuals are more likely to disperse because they are less able to compete within the highly saturated natal site. Finally, a model with the effect of MLH on propensity of post-fledgling dispersers to disperse to the long-distance sites of Africa was equivalent to the null model, suggesting that MLH had low to no effect on dispersal distance. Variations in individual genetic quality thus result in context-dependent heterogeneity in dispersal strategies at each stage of dispersal. Our results have important implications on fitness since sites visited early in life are known to influence site selection later on in life and future survival.
Highlights
Dispersal is a crucial life history trait in natural populations, with numerous implications for individual fitness as well as for species’ distribution, population dynamics and genetics [1,2,3]
Identity disequilibrium We found no significant evidence of identity equilibrium (ID) (g2 = 20.00076, SD = 0.002, p = 0.377) and heterozygosity-heterozigosity correlations gave equivalent results (Table S4 in Appendix S3)
We found that a model with the effect of multilocus heterozygosity (MLH) on propensity of post-fledgling dispersers to disperse to the longdistance sites of Africa was equivalent to the null model
Summary
Dispersal is a crucial life history trait in natural populations, with numerous implications for individual fitness as well as for species’ distribution, population dynamics and genetics [1,2,3]. As recently highlighted by Clobert et al [2], dispersal can be separated into three stages: departure, transience and settlement. The extrinsic factors, such as kin competition, resource competition, and environmental conditions, and, intrinsic factors, such as sex, age and juvenile body condition (or early body condition; hereafter referred to as EBC) are known to be some of the factors that influence dispersal strategies, and are likely to act independently on each stage of dispersal [1,2,3]. In the greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus), juvenile long-distance dispersers suffer lower survival in the first two years of life than juvenile residents or juvenile intermediate-distance dispersers [6]
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