Abstract
BackgroundIt is widely assumed that variation in fitness components has a physiological basis that might underlie selection on trade-offs, but the mechanisms driving decreased survival and future fecundity remain elusive. Here, we assessed whether physiological variables are related to workload ability or immediate fitness consequences and if they mediate future survival or reproductive success. We used data on 13 physiological variables measured in 93 female European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) at two breeding stages (incubation, chick-rearing), for first-and second-broods over two years (152 observations).ResultsThere was little co-variation among the physiological variables, either in incubating or chick-rearing birds, but some systematic physiological differences between the two stages. Chick-rearing birds had lower hematocrit and plasma creatine kinase but higher hemoglobin, triglyceride and uric acid levels. Only plasma corticosterone was repeatable between incubation and chick-rearing. We assessed relationships between incubation or chick-rearing physiology and measures of workload, current productivity, future fecundity or survival in a univariate manner, and found very few significant relationships. Thus, we next explored the utility of multivariate analysis (principal components analysis, Mahalanobis distance) to account for potentially complex physiological integration, but still found no clear associations.ConclusionsThis implies either that a) birds maintained physiological variables within a homeostatic range that did not affect their performance, b) there are relatively few links between physiology and performance, or, more likely, c) that the complexity of these relationships exceeds our ability to measure it. Variability in ecological context may complicate the relationship between physiology and behavior. We thus urge caution regarding the over-interpretation of isolated significant findings, based on single traits in single years, in the literature.
Highlights
It is widely assumed that variation in fitness components has a physiological basis that might underlie selection on trade-offs, but the mechanisms driving decreased survival and future fecundity remain elusive
For analyses of correlations among multiple variables, in incubating and chick-rearing birds, we considered results both using raw p values (p < 0.05) for exploratory purposes, and using adjusted p values in R based on False Discovery Rate (FDR) using the Benjamini/Hochberg correction [87]
Correlations among the suite of physiological variables in both incubating and chick-rearing females, change between stages and repeatability Here, we restricted our analysis of physiological data to samples obtained during incubation and chick-rearing for first broods due to the relatively small number of second brood samples
Summary
It is widely assumed that variation in fitness components has a physiological basis that might underlie selection on trade-offs, but the mechanisms driving decreased survival and future fecundity remain elusive. We assessed whether physiological variables are related to workload ability or immediate fitness consequences and if they mediate future survival or reproductive success. Reproduction, and parental care, is widely assumed to be costly: expenditure of parental resources (time, energy, physiological capacity) on care of offspring increases offspring fitness at the cost to the parent’s ability to invest in self-maintenance, i.e. there is a fitness cost of reproduction [1, 2]. This trade-off between current reproduction and residual fitness These studies reveal few, or perhaps complex, relationships between workload (e.g. nestling feeding frequency) and physiology
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