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

Leedale, AE; Simeoni, M; Sharp, SP; Green, JP; Slate, J; Lachlan, RF; Robinson, EJH; Hatchwell, BJ

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 avoidance of first-order kin as partners. Finally, we show that the similarity of vocal cues offers a plausible mechanism for discrimination against first-order kin during mate choice. Long-tailed tits are known to discriminate between the calls of close kin and nonkin, and they favor first-order kin in cooperative contexts, so we conclude that long-tailed tits use the same kin discrimination rule to avoid inbreeding as they do to direct help toward kin.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jun 22, 2020
• Deposit Date: Dec 6, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 6, 2022
• Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Print ISSN: 0027-8424
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
• Volume: 117
• Issue: 27
• Pages: 15724-15730
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1918726117
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1918726117