The relationship between phenotypic variation among offspring and mother body mass in wild boar: evidence of coin‐flipping?

Summary In highly variable environments, the optimal reproductive tactics of iteroparous organisms should minimize variance in yearly reproductive success to maximize the long‐term average reproductive success. To minimize among‐year variation in reproductive success, individuals can either minimize the variance in the number of offspring produced at each reproductive attempt (classical bet‐hedging) or maximize the phenotypic diversity of offspring produced within or among reproductive attempts (coin‐flipping). From a long‐term detailed study of an intensively exploited population facing a highly unpredictable environment, we identify a continuum of reproductive tactics in wild boar females depending on their body mass. At one end, light females adjusted litter size to their body mass and produced highly similar‐sized offspring within a litter. These females fitted the hypothesis of individual optimization commonly reported in warm‐blooded species, which involves both an optimal mass and an optimal number of offspring for a given mother. At the other end of the continuum, heavy females produced litters of variable size including a mixture of heavy and light offspring within litters. Prolific heavy wild boar females diversify the phenotype of their offspring, providing a first evidence for coin‐flipping in a warm‐blooded species.