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Parental care results in a greater mutation load, for which it is also a phenotypic antidote

Pascoal, Sonia; Shimadzu, Hideyasu; Mashoodh, Rahia; Kilner, Rebecca M; (2023) Parental care results in a greater mutation load, for which it is also a phenotypic antidote. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , 290 (1999) , Article 20230115. 10.1098/rspb.2023.0115. Green open access

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Abstract

Benevolent social behaviours, such as parental care, are thought to enable mildly deleterious mutations to persist. We tested this prediction experimentally using the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, an insect with biparental care. For 20 generations, we allowed replicate experimental burying beetle populations to evolve either with post-hatching care ('Full Care' populations) or without it ('No Care' populations). We then established new lineages, seeded from these experimental populations, which we inbred to assess their mutation load. Outbred lineages served as controls. We also tested whether the deleterious effects of a greater mutation load could be concealed by parental care by allowing half the lineages to receive post-hatching care, while half did not. We found that inbred lineages from the Full Care populations went extinct more quickly than inbred lineages from the No Care populations-but only when offspring received no post-hatching care. We infer that Full Care lineages carried a greater mutation load, but that the associated deleterious effects on fitness could be overcome if larvae received parental care. We suggest that the increased mutation load caused by parental care increases a population's dependence upon care. This could explain why care is seldom lost once it has evolved.

Type: Article
Title: Parental care results in a greater mutation load, for which it is also a phenotypic antidote
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.0115
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0115
Language: English
Additional information: © 2023 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords: Extinction rate, mutation load, social evolution
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10170764
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