Optimisation of energetic and reproductive gains explains behavioural responses to environmental variation across seasons and years.

Autor: Studd EK; Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Bellevue, QC, Canada.; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada., Menzies AK; Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Bellevue, QC, Canada., Siracusa ER; Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada., Dantzer B; Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA., Lane JE; Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada., McAdam AG; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA., Boutin S; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada., Humphries MM; Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Bellevue, QC, Canada.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Ecology letters [Ecol Lett] 2020 May; Vol. 23 (5), pp. 841-850. Date of Electronic Publication: 2020 Mar 18.
DOI: 10.1111/ele.13494
Abstrakt: Animals switch between inactive and active states, simultaneously impacting their energy intake, energy expenditure and predation risk, and collectively defining how they engage with environmental variation and trophic interactions. We assess daily activity responses to long-term variation in temperature, resources and mating opportunities to examine whether individuals choose to be active or inactive according to an optimisation of the relative energetic and reproductive gains each state offers. We show that this simplified behavioural decision approach predicts most activity variation (R 2  = 0.83) expressed by free-ranging red squirrels over 4 years, as quantified through accelerometer recordings (489 deployments; 5066 squirrel-days). Recognising activity as a determinant of energetic status, the predictability of activity variation aggregated at a daily scale, and the clear signal that behaviour is environmentally forced through optimisation of gain, provides an integrated approach to examine behavioural variation as an intermediary between environmental variation and energetic, life-history and ecological outcomes.
(© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/CNRS.)
Databáze: MEDLINE