Adam Dušek

• PhD (Zoology, Charles University)
• Researcher at Institute of Animal Science

Maternal rank ''inheritance'' occurs in cercopithecine primates, spotted hyenas and several ungulates. A recently observed positive relationship between dominance rank of a mother and that of her sub-adult offspring in wild red deer (Cervus elaphus) suggests that maternal rank ''inheritance'' also occurs in this species. This may be caused by vario...

The issue of adaptive adjustment of offspring sex ratio (proportion of male births) in polytocous mammals, producing several offspring per litter, is controversial because females of these species can maximize their fitness mainly by adjusting offspring number. To address this issue, we examined the effect of maternal condition at mating, experimen...

Litter size is one of the most reliable state-dependent life-history traits that indicate parental investment in polytocous (litter-bearing) mammals. The tendency to optimize litter size typically increases with decreasing availability of resources during the period of parental investment. To determine whether this tactic is also influenced by reso...

The phenomenon whereby pregnancy may be inhibited or terminated when a female is exposed to non‐sire males after mating is often, and rather generally, referred to as the ‘Bruce effect’. Widespread and indiscriminate use of the term for any case of pregnancy failure following exposure to an unfamiliar male, however, masks distinct physiological and...

Prenatal androgens are generally assumed to permanently affect the morphology of external genitalia. In laboratory rodents, the ano‐genital distance index (AGDI) has become widely used as a marker of natural prenatal masculinization. A greater value should indicate a greater masculinization. The aim of this study was to assess the developmental sta...

Secondary sex traits (SSTs) can favour males in intra-sexual competition, allowing females to reliably assess their quality. They can also be connected to other aspects of fitness, such as resistance to parasites and pathogens, as parasites have negative effects on the development of SSTs. Antlers are one of the most recognizable examples of SSTs w...

We equipped 17 captive red deer males ( Cervus elaphus ) with GPS collars to measure inter-individual distances throughout the 5-months of the antler growth period. We expected some individuals to associate regularly with others while others would not. We predicted that males aggregating with others within a socially stable environment (Associates)...

Out of rut, male red deer (Cervus elaphus) associate themselves in bachelor groups where animals compete for rank position via agonistic interactions. In a previous study on red deer, males were recognized either as “Non-Fighters” (NF, low frequency of attacks) or “Fighters” (F, high frequency of attacks). This study, therefore, aims to verify the...

Parents can enhance their fitness by favouring that sex whose reproductive value is expected to be highest. In species in which females are the larger sex with potentially greater fitness returns, one can assume that parents should bias their investment toward daughters to increase their daughters’ reproductive value (i.e. age-specific expectation...

Nonbreeding season territoriality is found in many mammal species irrespective of diet, being found in carnivores, granivores, and herbivores. However, we know the hormonal basis for this behavior in virtually none. American martens (Martes americana) show strong intrasexual, year-round territoriality. We collected serum samples from both territori...

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0173985.

SAS codes for the analyses.

S1 Dataset file contains five worksheets with the following data subsets: (1) maternal and litter traits, (2) dynamics of offspring mortality, (3) maternal weight change, (4) offspring weight change, and (5) probability of offspring death. The maternal and litter traits were used to determine the impact of pre-breeding food restriction (FR) on birt...

Among domestic dog breeders it is common practice to transfer a domestic dog bitch out of her home environment for mating, bringing her back after the mating. If the home environment contains a male, who is not the father of the foetuses, there is a potential risk of future infanticide. We collected 621 records on mating of 249 healthy bitches of 1...

Contents A recently observed developmental instability of the ano‐genital distance (AGD) in female mice indicates that natural prenatal androgens do not have such a robust effect on female genital morphology as has been generally assumed. Part of this instability might be caused by oestrous cyclicity. To check this assumption, we examined the effec...

Sucking duration in ungulates does not only mean milk transfer, but is also associated with maternal care in general. It seems to be a reflection of offspring demand rather than solely milk transfer rate. Thus, the objective of this study was to discriminate between sucking and allosucking (i.e. sucking non-maternal hind) behaviour in red deer acco...