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. 2022 Sep;31(18):4607-4621.
doi: 10.1111/mec.16318. Epub 2022 Jan 7.

Vitamin D status is heritable and under environment-dependent selection in the wild

Alexandra M Sparks  1   2 , Susan E Johnston  1 , Ian Handel  3 , Jill G Pilkington  1 , Jacqueline Berry  4 , Josephine M Pemberton  1 , Daniel H Nussey  1 , Richard J Mellanby  3
Affiliations

Vitamin D status is heritable and under environment-dependent selection in the wild

Alexandra M Sparks et al. Mol Ecol. 2022 Sep.

Abstract

Vitamin D has a well-established role in skeletal health and is increasingly linked to chronic disease and mortality in humans and companion animals. Despite the clear significance of vitamin D for health and obvious implications for fitness under natural conditions, no longitudinal study has tested whether the circulating concentration of vitamin D is under natural selection in the wild. Here, we show that concentrations of dietary-derived vitamin D2 and endogenously produced vitamin D3 metabolites are heritable and largely polygenic in a wild population of Soay sheep (Ovis aries). Vitamin D2 status was positively associated with female adult survival, and vitamin D3 status predicted female fecundity in particular, good environment years when sheep density and competition for resources was low. Our study provides evidence that vitamin D status has the potential to respond to selection, and also provides new insights into how vitamin D metabolism is associated with fitness in the wild.

Keywords: 25 hydroxyvitamin D; GWAS; Soay sheep; fitness; heritability; vitamin D.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The proportion of phenotypic variance explained by different random effects in univariate animal models for total vD (25(OH)D), vD2 (25(OH)D2) and vD3 (25(OH)D3) plasma concentrations in wild Soay sheep
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Genome‐wide association results for total vD (25(OH)D), vD2 (25(OH)D2) and vD3 (25(OH)D3) concentrations at 420,556 SNPs in 900 Soay sheep across all ages. Left panel: Manhattan plots of p‐values are corrected for inflation (by dividing by λ – total vD: 2.16, vD2: 1.94, vD3: 2.14) and the dashed line indicates the genome‐wide significance threshold. Right panel: p–p plots showing the association between expected and observed (λ corrected) p‐values where the solid line indicates the one to one line and the dashed line indicates the significance threshold
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Scatterplot of raw data and general linear model predictions for associations between vD2 (25(OH)D2) concentrations (standardized, for full details see Section 2) and subsequent over‐winter survival probability for adult female (green) and male (grey) Soay sheep. The slope is predicted from the model with both sexes (Table S10) with other fixed effects set as follows: yearling age group, dark coat colour, the year 2011 and average weight. The dashed lines represent standard errors
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Boxplots of raw data showing associations between total vD (25(OH)D) and vD3 (25(OH)D3) plasma concentrations and adult female fecundity (number of lambs born) by year in Soay sheep. Green boxplots indicate years in which there was a significant association (p < .05, Table S12) between total vD or vD3 and female fecundity
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