Abstract
Female greater horseshoe bats form maternity colonies each summer in order to give birth and raise young. During the mating period, females visit males occupying territorial sites, copulation takes place and sperm are stored until ovulation occurs, normally in April. Using microsatellite markers and a likelihood method of parentage analysis, we studied breeding behaviour and male reproductive success over a five-year period in a population of bats in south-west Britain. Paternity was assigned with 80% confidence to 44% of young born in five successive cohorts. While a small annual skew in male reproductive success was detected, the variance increased over five years due to the repeated success of a few individuals. Mating was polygynous, although some females gave birth to offspring sired by the same male in separate years. Such repeated partnerships probably result from fidelity for either mating sites or individuals or from sperm competition. Females mated with males born both within and outside their own natal colony; however, relatedness between parents was no less than the average recorded for male female pairs. Gene flow between colonies is likely to be primarily mediated by both female and male dispersal during the mating period rather than more permanent movements.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (183.2 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Amos B., Twiss S., Pomeroy P., Anderson S. Evidence for mate fidelity in the gray seal. Science. 1995 Jun 30;268(5219):1897–1899. doi: 10.1126/science.268.5219.1897. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Chesser R. K. Gene diversity and female philopatry. Genetics. 1991 Feb;127(2):437–447. doi: 10.1093/genetics/127.2.437. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Gagneux P., Woodruff D. S., Boesch C. Furtive mating in female chimpanzees. Nature. 1997 May 22;387(6631):358–359. doi: 10.1038/387358a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Marshall T. C., Slate J., Kruuk L. E., Pemberton J. M. Statistical confidence for likelihood-based paternity inference in natural populations. Mol Ecol. 1998 May;7(5):639–655. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.1998.00374.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- McCracken G. F., Bradbury J. W. Paternity and Genetic Heterogeneity in the Polygynous Bat, Phyllostomus hastatus. Science. 1977 Oct 21;198(4314):303–306. doi: 10.1126/science.198.4314.303. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- McCracken G. F. Communal nursing in mexican free-tailed bat maternity colonies. Science. 1984 Mar 9;223(4640):1090–1091. doi: 10.1126/science.223.4640.1090. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- doi: 10.1098/rspb.1999.0732. [DOI] [PMC free article] [Google Scholar]
- Petri B., Päbo S., Von Haeseler A., Tautz D. Paternity assessment and population subdivision in a natural population of the larger mouse-eared bat Myotis myotis. Mol Ecol. 1997 Mar;6(3):235–242. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.1997.00176.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Rossiter S. J., Burland T. M., Jones G., Barratt E. M. Characterization of microsatellite loci in the greater horseshoe bat Rhinolophus ferrumequinum. Mol Ecol. 1999 Nov;8(11):1959–1960. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.1999.00778-2.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]