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The phenotype of parents can have long-lasting effects on the development
of offspring as well as on their behaviour, physiology and morphology as
adults. In some cases, these changes may increase offspring fitness but,
in others, they can elevate parental fitness at a cost to the fitness of
their offspring. We show that in Kalahari meerkats (Suricata suricatta),
the circulating glucocorticoid (GC) hormones of pregnant females affect
the growth and cooperative behaviour of their offspring. We performed a
3-year experiment in wild meerkats to test the hypothesis that GC-mediated
maternal effects reduce the potential for offspring to reproduce directly
and therefore cause them to exhibit more cooperative behaviour. Daughters
(but not sons) born to mothers treated with cortisol during pregnancy grew
more slowly early in life and exhibited significantly more of two types of
cooperative behaviour (pup rearing and feeding) once they were adults
compared to offspring from control mothers. They also had lower measures
of GCs as they aged, which could explain the observed increases in
cooperative behaviour. Because early life growth is a crucial determinant
of fitness in female meerkats, our results indicate that GC-mediated
maternal effects may reduce the fitness of offspring, but may elevate
parental fitness as a consequence of increasing the cooperative behaviour
of their daughters.
196 views reported since publication in 2019.