Cost, risk, and avoidance of inbreeding in a cooperatively breeding bird

What is it about?

Inbreeding reduces fitness leading to selection for incest avoidance in many organisms. Passive processes, such as sex-biased dispersal, may reduce inbreeding risk, but when dispersal is limited, inbreeding may still be minimized by animals actively recognizing and discriminating kin from nonkin when choosing mates. We investigated inbreeding costs, risk, and avoidance in a cooperative bird species in which opposite-sex adults disperse locally to breed and frequently associate. We identified a reduction in fitness in inbred individuals and have shown that despite a substantial inbreeding risk, breeders alleviate this by discriminating against close kin as partners. We show that the increased vocal similarity among relatives offers a probable recognition mechanism for this observed level of kin discrimination during mate choice.

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Photo by Amee Fairbank-Brown on Unsplash

Photo by Amee Fairbank-Brown on Unsplash