ArticlePloS one2022
What is the best fitness measure in wild populations? A case study on the power of short-term fitness proxies to predict reproductive value.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- The costs of extra-pair behaviours in birds.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Lifetime fitness and annual survival are heritable and highly genetically correlated in a wild primate population.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2026Article
- Genome-Wide Homozygosity Predicts Inbreeding Depression in the Hihi/Stitchbird (Evolutionary applications · 2026Article
- Effects of Extreme Rainfall on a Dominant Seaweed Are Mitigated by Its Microbiota.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Lifetime fitness and annual survival are heritable and highly genetically correlated in a wild primate population.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Inbreeding reduces fitness in spatially structured populations of a threatened rattlesnake.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Early life adversity has sex-dependent effects on survival across the lifespan in rhesus macaques.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Not so social in old age: demography as one driver of decreasing sociality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Evaluating the Adaptive Fitness of Circadian Clocks and their Evolution.Journal of biological rhythms · 2024Review
- Rural selection drives the evolution of an urban-rural cline in coat color in gray squirrels.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Inclusive fitness forces of selection in an age-structured population.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb.Communications biology · 2023Article
- The long-lasting legacy of reproduction: lifetime reproductive success shapes expected genetic contributions of humans after 10 generations.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Adaptive, maladaptive, neutral, or absent plasticity: Hidden caveats of reaction norms.Evolutionary applications · 2023Article
- Big boned: How fat storage and other adaptations influenced large theropod foraging ecology.PloS one · 2023Article
- Different proxies, different stories? Imperfect correlations and different determinants of fitness in bighorn sheep.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Opposite-sex associations are linked with annual fitness, but sociality is stable over lifetime.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- Long-term fitness effects of the early-life environment in a wild bird population.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- The estimation of reproductive values from pedigrees.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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5 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fitness is at the core of evolutionary theory, but it is difficult to measure accurately. One way to measure long-term fitness is by calculating the individual's reproductive value, which represents the expected number of allele copies an individual passes on to distant future generations. However, this metric of fitness is scarcely used because the estimation of individual's reproductive value requires long-term pedigree data, which is rarely available in wild populations where following individuals from birth to death is often impossible. Wild study systems therefore use short-term fitness metrics as proxies, such as the number of offspring produced. This study compared two frequently used short-term metrics for fitness obtained at different offspring life stages (eggs, hatchlings, fledglings and recruits), and compared their ability to predict reproductive values derived from the genetic pedigree of a wild passerine bird population. We used twenty years of precise field observations and a near-complete genetic pedigree to calculate reproductive success, individual growth rate and de-lifed fitness as lifetime fitness measures, and as annual de-lifed fitness. We compared the power of these metrics to predict reproductive values and lineage survival to the end of the study period. The three short-term fitness proxies predict the reproductive values and lineage survival only when measured at the recruit stage. There were no significant differences between the different fitness proxies at the same offspring stages in predicting the reproductive values and lineage survival. Annual fitness at one year old predicted reproductive values equally well as lifetime de-lifed fitness. However, none of the short-term fitness proxies were strongly associated with the reproductive values. The commonly used short-term fitness proxies best predict long-term fitness when measured at recruitment stage. Thus, because lifetime fitness measured at recruit stage and annual fitness in the first year of life were the best proxies of long-term fitness in short-lived birds, we encourage their future use.
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