HERITABILITY OF FITNESS COMPONENTS IN A WILD BIRD POPULATION

Heritability of fitness in a wild mammal population.

Classical population genetics theory predicts that selection should deplete heritable genetic variance for fitness. We show here that, consistent with this prediction, there was a negative correlation between the heritability of a trait and its association with fitness in a wild population of red deer (Cervus elaphus) and there was no evidence of significant heritability of total fitness. Howev...

Fitness effects of endemic malaria infections in a wild bird population: the importance of ecological structure.

1. Parasites can have important effects on host populations influencing either fecundity or mortality, but understanding the magnitude of these effects in endemic host-parasite systems is challenging and requires an understanding of ecological processes affecting both host and parasite. 2. Avian blood parasites (Haemoproteus and Plasmodium) have been much studied, but the effects of these paras...

Personality and basal metabolic rate in a wild bird population

Heritable circadian period length in a wild bird population.

Timing is essential, but circadian clocks, which play a crucial role in timekeeping, are almost unaddressed in evolutionary ecology. A key property of circadian clocks is their free-running period length (τ), i.e. the time taken for a full cycle under constant conditions. Under laboratory conditions, concordance of τ with the ambient light-dark cycle confers major fitness benefits, but little i...

The forms and fitness cost of senescence: age-specific recapture, survival, reproduction, and reproductive value in a wild bird population.

Longitudinal studies of senescence accumulate rapidly from natural populations. However, it is largely unknown whether different fitness components senesce in parallel, how reproductive and survival senescence contribute to declines in reproductive value, and how large the fitness cost of senescence is (the difference between the observed reproductive value and the hypothetical reproductive val...