Linking body mass and group dynamics in an obligate cooperative breeder.
Linking body mass and group dynamics in an obligate cooperative breeder.
复制标题
将义务合作饲养者的体重和群体动态联系起来。
DOI：
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发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
4.8
通讯作者：
T. Clutton‐Brock
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Ozgul;A. Bateman;S. English;T. Coulson;T. Clutton‐Brock
社会和环境因素通过影响身体质量等与健康相关的表型特征来影响关键的生活史过程和种群动态。由于社会地位的不同以及随之而来的资源获取的不同，体重的作用在合作育种者中尤为明显。研究体重变化的潜在机制及其人口统计学后果有助于阐明社会和环境因素如何影响合作繁殖种群的动态。在这项研究中，我们分析了个体体重差异对合作繁殖的猫鼬--Kalahari meerkat，Suricata suricatta的群体规模和结构的时间动态的影响。首先，我们研究了体重如何与社会(优势地位和帮手数量)和环境因素(降雨量和季节)相互作用，影响雌性猫鼬的关键生活史过程(生存、生长、迁徙和繁殖)。接下来，使用基于个体的种群模型，我们表明，明确包括个体体重变化的模型比那些忽略这一形态特征的模型更好地预测群体动态。体重主要通过对帮手迁出和显性繁殖的影响来影响群体动力学。降雨对群体动力有特质调节的不稳定效应，而帮助者的数量则有直接和稳定的效应。尽管产生了时间波动，但帮助者数量对不同人口比率的影响相互抵消，从长期来看稳定了群体动态。我们的研究表明，社会和环境因素相互作用，产生了个体体重的差异，解释了这种差异有助于解释这种合作繁殖种群的群体动态。
Social and environmental factors influence key life-history processes and population dynamics by affecting fitness-related phenotypic traits such as body mass. The role of body mass is particularly pronounced in cooperative breeders due to variation in social status and consequent variation in access to resources. Investigating the mechanisms underlying variation in body mass and its demographic consequences can help elucidate how social and environmental factors affect the dynamics of cooperatively breeding populations. In this study, we present an analysis of the effect of individual variation in body mass on the temporal dynamics of group size and structure of a cooperatively breeding mongoose, the Kalahari meerkat, Suricata suricatta. First, we investigate how body mass interacts with social (dominance status and number of helpers) and environmental (rainfall and season) factors to influence key life-history processes (survival, growth, emigration and reproduction) in female meerkats. Next, using an individual-based population model, we show that the models explicitly including individual variation in body mass predict group dynamics better than those ignoring this morphological trait. Body mass influences group dynamics mainly through its effects on helper emigration and dominant reproduction. Rainfall has a trait-mediated, destabilizing effect on group dynamics, whereas the number of helpers has a direct and stabilizing effect. Counteracting effects of number of helpers on different demographic rates, despite generating temporal fluctuations, stabilizes group dynamics in the long term. Our study demonstrates that social and environmental factors interact to produce individual variation in body mass and accounting for this variation helps to explain group dynamics in this cooperatively breeding population.