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From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird

Although population studies have long assumed that all individuals of a given sex and age are identical, ignoring among‐individual differences may strongly bias our perception of eco‐evolutionary processes. Individual heterogeneity, often referred to as individual quality, has received increasing re...

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Autores principales: Fay, Rémi, Barbraud, Christophe, Delord, Karine, Weimerskirch, Henri
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6084314/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30122788
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1275
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author Fay, Rémi
Barbraud, Christophe
Delord, Karine
Weimerskirch, Henri
author_facet Fay, Rémi
Barbraud, Christophe
Delord, Karine
Weimerskirch, Henri
author_sort Fay, Rémi
collection PubMed
description Although population studies have long assumed that all individuals of a given sex and age are identical, ignoring among‐individual differences may strongly bias our perception of eco‐evolutionary processes. Individual heterogeneity, often referred to as individual quality, has received increasing research attention in the last decades. However, there are still substantial gaps in our current knowledge. For example, there is little information on how individual heterogeneity influences various life‐history traits simultaneously, and studies describing individual heterogeneity in wild populations are generally not able to jointly identify possible sources of this variation. Here, based on a mark–recapture data set of 9,685 known‐aged Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans), we investigated the existence of individual quality over the entire life cycle of this species, from early life to senescence. Using finite mixture models, we investigated the expression of individual heterogeneity in various demographic traits, and examined the origin of these among‐individual differences by considering the natal environmental conditions. We found that some individuals consistently outperformed others during most of their life. In old age, however, the senescence rate was stronger in males that showed high demographic performance at younger ages. Variation in individual quality seemed strongly affected by extrinsic factors experienced during the ontogenetic period. We found that individuals born in years with high population density tended to have lower performances during their lifespan, suggesting delayed density dependence effects through individual quality. Our study showed that among‐individual differences could be important in structuring individual life history trajectories, with substantial consequences at higher ecological levels such as population dynamics.
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spelling pubmed-60843142018-08-16 From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird Fay, Rémi Barbraud, Christophe Delord, Karine Weimerskirch, Henri Ecol Monogr Articles Although population studies have long assumed that all individuals of a given sex and age are identical, ignoring among‐individual differences may strongly bias our perception of eco‐evolutionary processes. Individual heterogeneity, often referred to as individual quality, has received increasing research attention in the last decades. However, there are still substantial gaps in our current knowledge. For example, there is little information on how individual heterogeneity influences various life‐history traits simultaneously, and studies describing individual heterogeneity in wild populations are generally not able to jointly identify possible sources of this variation. Here, based on a mark–recapture data set of 9,685 known‐aged Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans), we investigated the existence of individual quality over the entire life cycle of this species, from early life to senescence. Using finite mixture models, we investigated the expression of individual heterogeneity in various demographic traits, and examined the origin of these among‐individual differences by considering the natal environmental conditions. We found that some individuals consistently outperformed others during most of their life. In old age, however, the senescence rate was stronger in males that showed high demographic performance at younger ages. Variation in individual quality seemed strongly affected by extrinsic factors experienced during the ontogenetic period. We found that individuals born in years with high population density tended to have lower performances during their lifespan, suggesting delayed density dependence effects through individual quality. Our study showed that among‐individual differences could be important in structuring individual life history trajectories, with substantial consequences at higher ecological levels such as population dynamics. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017-10-26 2018-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6084314/ /pubmed/30122788 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1275 Text en © 2017 The Authors Ecological Monographs published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Ecological Society of America. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Articles
Fay, Rémi
Barbraud, Christophe
Delord, Karine
Weimerskirch, Henri
From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird
title From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird
title_full From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird
title_fullStr From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird
title_full_unstemmed From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird
title_short From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird
title_sort from early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long‐lived seabird
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6084314/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30122788
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1275
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