Maternal survival costs in an asocial mammal.

Autor: Kanaziz R; Department of Fish, Wildlife, & Conservation Biology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA.; Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA., Huyvaert KP; Department of Veterinary Microbiology & Pathology Washington State University Pullman Washington USA., Wells CP; Department of Fish, Wildlife, & Conservation Biology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA.; Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA., Van Vuren DH; Department of Wildlife, Fish, & Conservation Biology University of California Davis Davis California USA., Aubry LM; Department of Fish, Wildlife, & Conservation Biology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA.; Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Ecology and evolution [Ecol Evol] 2022 May 11; Vol. 12 (5), pp. e8874. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 May 11 (Print Publication: 2022).
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8874
Abstrakt: Maternal characteristics, social dynamics, and environmental factors can all influence reproduction and survival and shape trade-offs that might arise between these components of fitness. Short-lived mammals like the golden-mantled ground squirrel (GMGS; Callospermophilus lateralis ) tend to maximize effort toward current reproduction at the expense of survival but may be complicated by other aspects of the species' life history and environment. Here, we use 25 years of data (1995-2020) collected from a population of GMGS at the Rocky Mountain Biological Research Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, to test the effect of several maternal characteristics (e.g., age, experience, and timing of litter emergence), social context (e.g., litter sex ratio and kin density), and environmental context (e.g., date of bare ground and length of vegetative growing season) on survival of reproductive female GMGS using Cox proportional hazard models. Our results indicated that social dynamics (i.e., density) and environmental conditions (i.e., standardized first day of permanent snow cover and length of growing season) explained significant variation in annual maternal survival, while maternal characteristics did not. A higher density of related breeding females and the total number of females (both related and unrelated to the focal mother) were associated with an increase in the mortality hazard. A later standardized date of the first day of permanent snow cover and a shorter growing season both reduced the maternal mortality hazard. Together, our results suggest that factors extrinsic to the squirrels affect maternal survival and thus may also influence local population growth and dynamics in GMGS and other short-lived, territorial mammal species.
Competing Interests: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
(© 2022 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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