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Variance in Female Reproductive Success Differentially Impacts Effective Population Size in the Short-Nosed Fruit Bat, Cynopterus sphinx

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Abstract

Effective population size (N e) quantifies the effects of micro-evolutionary processes and the rate of loss of genetic diversity in a population. Several demographic and mating parameters reduce N e. Theoretical studies elucidate the impacts of various demographic and mating system parameters on N e, while empirical studies illustrate realized N e for species with differing life histories and mating systems. However, effect of intra-specific variation in mating system on effective size remains largely unexplored. In this paper we investigated the effect of promiscuous and polygynous mating on N e in two wild populations of the short-nosed fruit bat, Cynopterus sphinx. N e/N (ratio of effective population size to census size) was lower than unity in both populations, and much lower for the polygynous population compared to promiscuous population. Elasticity analyses reveal that N e/N was sensitive to deviations in the sex ratio. Variance in female reproductive success had a higher impact on N e compared to variance in male reproductive success in the promiscuous population. However, for the polygynous population, impact of variance in male reproductive success on N e was higher than that of variance in female reproductive success. Our results suggest that depending on mating system, different populations of the same species could have alternate evolutionary trajectories. The rate of loss of genetic diversity would be lower for the promiscuous population compared to the polygynous population. Our study is the first to highlight which parameters would most significantly impact population specific N e under different mating systems.

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Abbreviations

Ne :

Effective population size

N:

Census population size

r:

Sex ratio, expressed as proportion of males

T:

Mean generational interval

Ai :

Average adult life span for each sex i (i = m: males and i = f: females)

IAi :

Standardized variance in adult life span for for each sex i (i = m: males and i = f: females)

Ibf :

Standardized variance in female fecundity per breeding season

Ibm :

Standardized variance in male mating success per breeding season

vi :

Annual adult survivorship

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Acknowledgements

Author acknowledge Vanitha for help with partial derivatives; Balaji for comments on the previous version of the manuscript; Sripathi, DP SwamiDoss, Balaji, Vinoth, Sandeep, Pilot, Venkatesh, Pooja, Megha, Arindam, Madhusmita, Prerona, Debyan, Arjit, Avik, Subhajit, Shivaraj and Dhanabalan for their help in fieldwork.

Author Contributions

KMG conceived the idea, designed the workflow, carried out the lab work, performed all analyses and drafted the final manuscript; UR participated in research design and helped in drafting of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by National Centre for Biological Sciences-Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and DST grant (SR/S0/AS-65/2012) (to UR).

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  1. Kritika M. Garg

    Present address: Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecology and Evolution, National Centre for Biological Sciences, TIFR, Bellary Road, Bangalore, 560065, India

    Kritika M. Garg & Uma Ramakrishnan

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  1. Kritika M. Garg
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Correspondence to Kritika M. Garg.

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Garg, K.M., Ramakrishnan, U. Variance in Female Reproductive Success Differentially Impacts Effective Population Size in the Short-Nosed Fruit Bat, Cynopterus sphinx . Evol Biol 44, 366–373 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11692-017-9414-y

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