Conspecifics of many animal species physically compete to gain reproductive resources and thus fitness. Despite the importance of competitive ability across the animal kingdom, specific traits that influence or underpin competitive ability are poorly characterized. Here, we investigate whether there are genetic influences on competitive ability within male house mice. Additionally, we examined if litter demographics (litter size and litter sex ratio) influence competitive ability. We phenotyped two generations for a male's ability to possess a reproductive resource--a prime nesting site--using semi-natural enclosures with mixed sex groupings. We used the "Animal Model" coupled with an extensive pedigree to estimate several genetic parameters. Competitive ability was found to be highly heritable, but only displayed a moderate genetic correlation to body mass. Interestingly, litter sex ratio had a weak negative influence on competitive ability. Litter size had no significant influence on competitive ability. Our study also highlights how much remains unknown about the proximal causes of competitive ability.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3626107 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10519-012-9577-3 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Influence of drilling incidence angle on the drilling force distribution of pneumatic impactor.
Sci Rep
January 2025
School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Quzhou College of Technology, Quzhou, 324000, China.
Pneumatic impactor is widely used in the drilling process of various medium and high hard rocks with poor drill ability. Currently, there is relatively little analysis on the impact of the inclination of the rock surface during the drilling process on the drilling efficiency and excavation capability of pneumatic impactors. Based on the dynamic theory of impact drilling and finite element method (FEM), the constitutive model of HJC criterion and INVENTOR 3D mechanical structure design software, a 3D numerical analysis system of piston-bit head-rock during pneumatic impactor drilling is established by ANSYS LS-DYNA, a nonlinear dynamic analysis software.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtracting organs of interest from medical images based on convolutional neural network with auxiliary and refined constraints.
Sci Rep
January 2025
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Tongren Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200336, China.
Accurately extracting organs from medical images provides radiologist with more comprehensive evidences to clinical diagnose, which offers up a higher accuracy and efficiency. However, the key to achieving accurate segmentation lies in abundant clues for contour distinction, which has a high demand for the network architecture design and its practical training status. To this end, we design auxiliary and refined constraints to optimize the energy function by supplying additional guidance in training procedure, thus promoting model's ability to capture information.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStrain diversity and host specificity of the gut symbiont Gilliamella in Apis mellifera, Apis cerana and Bombus terrestris.
Microbiol Res
January 2025
College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China. Electronic address:
Social bees, with their specialized gut microbiota and societal transmission between individuals, provide an ideal model for studying host-gut microbiota interactions. While the functional disparities arising from strain-level diversity of gut symbionts and their effects on host health have been studied in Apis mellifera and bumblebees, studies focusing on host-specific investigations of individual strains across different honeybee hosts remain relatively unexplored. In this study, the complete genomic sequences of 17 strains of Gilliamella from A.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA strategy for controlling Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae: inhibition of ClpV expression.
BMC Microbiol
January 2025
The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, China.
The emergence and prevalence of hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (hvKP) have proposed a great challenge to control this infection. Therefore, exploring some new drugs or strategies for treating hvKP infection is an urgent issue for scientific researchers. In the present study, the clpV gene deletion strain of hvKP (ΔclpV-hvKP) was constructed using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, and the biological characteristics of ΔclpV-hvKP were investigated to explore the new targets for controlling this pathogen.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInclusive basketball training for players with intellectual disability.
J Sci Med Sport
December 2024
Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences, eCampus University, Novedrate (CO), Italy.
Objectives: To evaluate sport-specific basketball skills before and after 8 months of integrated and non-integrated basketball practice of participants with intellectual disability; in relation to the competitive basketball level and the degree of intellectual disability.
Design: Pre-test/training/post-test design.
Methods: Forty-one adult male players with intellectual disability were randomly divided into 21 athletes playing in the Integrated Basketball group together with 10 athletes without intellectual disability, and 20 athletes playing in the Non-integrated Basketball group.
Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!