Fine-scale population structure analysis in Armadillidium vulgare (Isopoda: Oniscidea) reveals strong female philopatry

TL;DR

This study investigates sex-biased dispersal in Armadillidium vulgare, revealing strong female philopatry through fine-scale genetic structure analysis, which supports classical hypotheses related to parental care and mating competition.

Contribution

It provides the first fine-scale genetic evidence of female philopatry in A. vulgare, linking dispersal patterns to reproductive investment and social behavior.

Findings

Females show significant genetic structuring at small spatial scales.

Males do not exhibit significant genetic structure at the same scale.

Results support hypotheses linking parental care and sex-biased dispersal.

Abstract

In the last decades, dispersal studies have benefited from the use of molecular markers for detecting patterns differing between categories of individuals and have highlighted sex-biased dispersal in several species. To explain this phenomenon, several hypotheses implying mating systems, intrasexual competition or sex-related handicaps have been proposed. In this context, we investigated sex-biased dispersal in Armadillidium vulgare, a terrestrial isopod with a promiscuous mating system. As a proxy for effective dispersal, we performed a fine-scale investigation of the spatial genetic structure in males and females, using individuals originating from five sampling points located within 70 meters of each other. Based on microsatellite markers and spatial autocorrelation analyses, our results revealed that while males did not present a significant genetic structure at this geographic scale, females were significantly and genetically more similar to each other when they were collected in the same sampling point. As females invest more parental care than males in A. vulgare, but also because this species is promiscuous and males experience a high intrasexual competition, our results meet the predictions of most classical hypotheses for sex-biased dispersal. We suggest that widening dispersal studies to other isopods or crustaceans, differing in their ecology or mating system and displaying varying levels of parental care, might shed light on the processes underlying the evolution of sex-biased dispersal.