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Theory suggests that the amount of reproductive effort expended by a parent is an adaptive trait shaped by natural selection because it maximizes lifetime fitness. For a litter-bearing marsupial, teat number is one of the most important parameters affecting female fecundity and therefore lifetime reproductive success. Unlike eutherian mammals, the maximum litter size that a female can rear is determined by her teat-number, because each pouch young is permanently attached to one teat for their first 30-40 days of life. Teat number variation has been recorded in a number of Australia’s native dasyurids, with one of the most well documented being that of A. agilis, where females usually have 6, 8 or 10 teats. The aim of this project is to investigate whether there are correlations between a number of aspects of A. agilis’ ecology, life history traits and genetic variation with the geographic distribution of teat number observed in this species.
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