Extrapair paternity in a German population of the Northern Wheatear ()

Dagmar Kudernatsch (1) , Martin Buchmann (2) , Wolfgang Fiedler (1) , Gernot Segelbacher (3)

1 Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
2 Martin Buchmann
3 Department Wildlife Ecology and Management

We demonstrate the potential of a set of novel microsatellite markers to investigate kin structure and population genetics in the Northern Wheatear (). In this study, based on 242 individuals from a population in Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany), we found that 26% of the offspring in 46% of the broods were sired by other males than the social fathers. We tested different hypotheses why males engage in extrapair copulations and found that almost all identified genetic fathers originated from directly neighbouring territories. Additionally, we detected 2 out of 134 offspring in two broods that could not be assigned to their putative mother and thus were probably the result of intraspecific brood parasitism.

Mots clés: Northern Wheatear; Microsatellites; Extrapair young; Brood parasitism

Dagmar Kudernatsch, Martin Buchmann, Wolfgang Fiedler, Gernot Segelbacher. Extrapair paternity in a German population of the Northern Wheatear (). Journal für Ornithologie = Journal of Ornithology, 2010, 151 (2), pp.491-498. ⟨10.1007/s10336-009-0486-z⟩. ⟨hal-00568366⟩