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Forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in Iberian red deer

Body condition for reproduction in capital breeders such as the red deer (Cervus elaphus) is mostly determined by their stored energy reserves. Thus, environmental conditions and resource availability may affect reproductive performance and breeding success. In warm Mediterranean regions, current cl...

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Autores principales: F. Millán, Marina, Carranza, Juan, Seoane, José M., Pérez-González, Javier
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9714875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36454913
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278367
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author F. Millán, Marina
Carranza, Juan
Seoane, José M.
Pérez-González, Javier
author_facet F. Millán, Marina
Carranza, Juan
Seoane, José M.
Pérez-González, Javier
author_sort F. Millán, Marina
collection PubMed
description Body condition for reproduction in capital breeders such as the red deer (Cervus elaphus) is mostly determined by their stored energy reserves. Thus, environmental conditions and resource availability may affect reproductive performance and breeding success. In warm Mediterranean regions, current climate change is driving to a hotter and drier scenario that is expected to affect the biology and dynamics of many populations. We examined the impact of these local climate variations on red deer body condition and the relationship with female reproductive phenology and breeding success. We used satellite information of landscape vegetation along with a 22-year data series of direct field behavioural observations during the rutting season in Doñana National Park (SW Spain). We analyzed faecal nitrogen content (FN) from faeces collected during the rut. We found that poor vegetation availability in drier years was related to worse body condition of deer (measured by FN) and a delay in the rutting season, which associated with lower reproductive rates (measured by the proportion of females with calves observed the next year). We also evidenced an interesting interaction between environmental conditions in consecutive years on the timing of breeding season, with timing of breeding being more delayed when previous year resource availability was high and many females bred, and the consecutive one was poor, so females hardly recovered condition and the rut occurred later. These findings highlight the carry-over effect of reproduction in capital breeders and the potential impact of climate-change conditions on red deer breeding.
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spelling pubmed-97148752022-12-02 Forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in Iberian red deer F. Millán, Marina Carranza, Juan Seoane, José M. Pérez-González, Javier PLoS One Research Article Body condition for reproduction in capital breeders such as the red deer (Cervus elaphus) is mostly determined by their stored energy reserves. Thus, environmental conditions and resource availability may affect reproductive performance and breeding success. In warm Mediterranean regions, current climate change is driving to a hotter and drier scenario that is expected to affect the biology and dynamics of many populations. We examined the impact of these local climate variations on red deer body condition and the relationship with female reproductive phenology and breeding success. We used satellite information of landscape vegetation along with a 22-year data series of direct field behavioural observations during the rutting season in Doñana National Park (SW Spain). We analyzed faecal nitrogen content (FN) from faeces collected during the rut. We found that poor vegetation availability in drier years was related to worse body condition of deer (measured by FN) and a delay in the rutting season, which associated with lower reproductive rates (measured by the proportion of females with calves observed the next year). We also evidenced an interesting interaction between environmental conditions in consecutive years on the timing of breeding season, with timing of breeding being more delayed when previous year resource availability was high and many females bred, and the consecutive one was poor, so females hardly recovered condition and the rut occurred later. These findings highlight the carry-over effect of reproduction in capital breeders and the potential impact of climate-change conditions on red deer breeding. Public Library of Science 2022-12-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9714875/ /pubmed/36454913 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278367 Text en © 2022 F. Millán et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
F. Millán, Marina
Carranza, Juan
Seoane, José M.
Pérez-González, Javier
Forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in Iberian red deer
title Forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in Iberian red deer
title_full Forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in Iberian red deer
title_fullStr Forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in Iberian red deer
title_full_unstemmed Forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in Iberian red deer
title_short Forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in Iberian red deer
title_sort forage quality of consecutive years interact to affect body condition, reproductive rate and rut phenology in iberian red deer
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9714875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36454913
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278367
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