Abstract
Parental care is critical for fitness, yet little is known about its genetic basis. Here, we estimate the heritability of parenting behaviour in a species famous for its diversity and its behavioural repertoire: three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus). Male three-spined stickleback are the sole providers of parental care that is necessary for offspring survival; therefore, this system offers the opportunity to study the inheritance of parental behaviour when selection is primarily acting on males. Fanning behaviour is a conspicuous parental behaviour that is readily quantified in this species. We show that the heritability of fanning behaviour is ≥0.9 and significantly different from zero within a freshwater population. Moreover, there was abundant genetic variation for fanning behaviour, indicating that it could readily evolve. These results suggest that parenting behaviour is tractable for further genetic dissection in this system.
Highlights
For many organisms, providing parental care is necessary for the survival of offspring [1]
We report an estimate of the coefficient of genetic variation (CVA), a measure of evolutionary potential that is standardized by the trait mean rather than trait variance and is often a better measure of evolvability than heritability [28]
We show that our measure of parenting behaviour is highly heritable in three-spined stickleback
Summary
For many organisms, providing parental care is necessary for the survival of offspring [1]. Different forms of parental care have evolved and organisms exhibit a wide array of behaviours associated with offspring defence, brooding and provisioning. Given the importance of parenting behaviour for fitness and its diversity, it is surprising that we know so little about its genetic basis. A few studies in birds and insects have estimated the heritability of parenting behaviours associated with offspring provisioning [2,3,4,5,6,7]. Other studies have focused on the heritable basis of indirect forms of parental care such as oviposition behaviour in insects and reptiles [8,9,10,11], and nest construction in mammals [12,13].
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