title: Fluctuating food resources influence developmental plasticity in wild boar.
abstract: To maximize long-term average reproductive success, individuals can diversify the phenotypes of offspring produced within a reproductive event by displaying the 'coin-flipping' tactic. Wild boar (Sus scrofa scrofa) females have been reported to adopt this tactic. However, whether the magnitude of developmental plasticity within a litter depends on stochasticity in food resources has not been yet investigated. From long-term monitoring, we found that juvenile females produced similar-sized fetuses within a litter independent of food availability. By contrast, adult females adjusted their relative allocation to littermates to the amount of food resources, by providing a similar allocation to all littermates in years of poor food resources but producing highly diversified offspring phenotypes within a litter in years of abundant food resources. By minimizing sibling rivalry, such a plastic reproductive tactic allows adult wild boar females to maximize the number of littermates for a given breeding event.
authors.affiliation: UMR 5558, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, Université de Lyon, 69000 Lyon, France. marlene.gamelon@univ-lyon1.fr
authors.forename: Marlène
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gamelon
authors.forename: Mathieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Douhard
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Baubet
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gimenez
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brandt
authors.forename: Jean-Michel
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Gaillard
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000835:Animals, Wild; D005260:Female; D005523:Food Supply; D008098:Litter Size; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D013552:Swine / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: coin-flipping; fetus mass; food resources; mast production; variable environment
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