ArticleEvolution; international journal of organic evolution2018
Inbreeding, inbreeding depression, and infidelity in a cooperatively breeding bird.
Article in Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Limited Lifetime Costs of Inbreeding in a Large Wild Population of Superb Fairy-Wrens.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Using Landsat Satellite Imagery to Investigate Spatial and Temporal Variation in Life History Traits in a Long-Term Study Population of Superb Fairy-WrensEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Adaptive potential in the face of a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils.Molecular ecology · 2024Article
- Population structure and evolutionary history of the greater cane rat (Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Cost, risk, and avoidance of inbreeding in a cooperatively breeding bird.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- The 'algebra of evolution': the Robertson-Price identity and viability selection for body mass in a wild bird population.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Extra-pair paternity in birds.Molecular ecology · 2019Review
- Indirect fitness benefits through extra-pair mating are large for an inbred minority, but cannot explain widespread infidelity among red-winged fairy-wrens.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2019Article
- Article
- Socio-ecological conditions and female infidelity in the Seychelles warbler.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Inbreeding depression plays a major role in shaping mating systems: in particular, inbreeding avoidance is often proposed as a mechanism explaining extra-pair reproduction in socially monogamous species. This suggestion relies on assumptions that are rarely comprehensively tested: that inbreeding depression is present, that higher kinship between social partners increases infidelity, and that infidelity reduces the frequency of inbreeding. Here, we test these assumptions using 26 years of data for a cooperatively breeding, socially monogamous bird with high female infidelity, the superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus). Although inbred individuals were rare (∼6% of offspring), we found evidence of inbreeding depression in nestling mass (but not in fledgling survival). Mother-son social pairings resulted in 100% infidelity, but kinship between a social pair did not otherwise predict female infidelity. Nevertheless, extra-pair offspring were less likely to be inbred than within-pair offspring. Finally, the social environment (the number of helpers in a group) did not affect offspring inbreeding coefficients or inbreeding depression levels. In conclusion, despite some agreement with the assumptions that are necessary for inbreeding avoidance to drive infidelity, the apparent scarcity of inbreeding events and the observed levels of inbreeding depression seem insufficient to explain the ubiquitous infidelity in this system, beyond the mother-son mating avoidance.
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