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Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep

A cost of reproduction may not be observable in the presence of environmental or individual heterogeneity because they affect the resources available to individuals. Individual space use is critical in determining both the resources available to individuals and the exposure to factors that mediate t...

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Autores principales: Regan, Charlotte E., Pemberton, Josephine M., Pilkington, Jill G., Smiseth, Per T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9826142/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36063153
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14083
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author Regan, Charlotte E.
Pemberton, Josephine M.
Pilkington, Jill G.
Smiseth, Per T.
author_facet Regan, Charlotte E.
Pemberton, Josephine M.
Pilkington, Jill G.
Smiseth, Per T.
author_sort Regan, Charlotte E.
collection PubMed
description A cost of reproduction may not be observable in the presence of environmental or individual heterogeneity because they affect the resources available to individuals. Individual space use is critical in determining both the resources available to individuals and the exposure to factors that mediate the value of these resources (e.g. competition and parasitism). Despite this, there has, to our knowledge, been little research to understand how between‐individual differences in resource acquisition, caused by variation in space use, interact with environmental variation occurring at the population scale to influence estimates of the cost of reproduction in natural populations. We used long‐term data from the St. Kilda Soay sheep population to understand how differences in age, relative home range quality, and average adult body mass, interacted with annual variation in population density and winter North Atlantic Oscillation index to influence over‐winter survival and reproduction in the subsequent year, for females that had invested into reproduction to varying degrees. Our results suggest that Soay sheep females experience costs both in terms of future survival and future reproduction. However, we found little evidence that estimated costs of reproduction vary depending on relative home range quality. There are several possible causes for the lack of a relationship between relative home range quality and our estimate of the costs experienced by females. These include the potential for a correlation between relative home range quality and reproductive allocation to mask a relationship between home range quality and reproductive costs, as well as the potential for the benefit of higher quality home ranges being offset by higher densities. Nevertheless, our results raise questions regarding the presence or context‐dependence of relationships between resource access and the estimated cost of reproduction.
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spelling pubmed-98261422023-01-09 Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep Regan, Charlotte E. Pemberton, Josephine M. Pilkington, Jill G. Smiseth, Per T. J Evol Biol Research Articles A cost of reproduction may not be observable in the presence of environmental or individual heterogeneity because they affect the resources available to individuals. Individual space use is critical in determining both the resources available to individuals and the exposure to factors that mediate the value of these resources (e.g. competition and parasitism). Despite this, there has, to our knowledge, been little research to understand how between‐individual differences in resource acquisition, caused by variation in space use, interact with environmental variation occurring at the population scale to influence estimates of the cost of reproduction in natural populations. We used long‐term data from the St. Kilda Soay sheep population to understand how differences in age, relative home range quality, and average adult body mass, interacted with annual variation in population density and winter North Atlantic Oscillation index to influence over‐winter survival and reproduction in the subsequent year, for females that had invested into reproduction to varying degrees. Our results suggest that Soay sheep females experience costs both in terms of future survival and future reproduction. However, we found little evidence that estimated costs of reproduction vary depending on relative home range quality. There are several possible causes for the lack of a relationship between relative home range quality and our estimate of the costs experienced by females. These include the potential for a correlation between relative home range quality and reproductive allocation to mask a relationship between home range quality and reproductive costs, as well as the potential for the benefit of higher quality home ranges being offset by higher densities. Nevertheless, our results raise questions regarding the presence or context‐dependence of relationships between resource access and the estimated cost of reproduction. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022-09-05 2022-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9826142/ /pubmed/36063153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14083 Text en © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Evolutionary Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Society for Evolutionary Biology. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Regan, Charlotte E.
Pemberton, Josephine M.
Pilkington, Jill G.
Smiseth, Per T.
Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep
title Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep
title_full Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep
title_fullStr Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep
title_full_unstemmed Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep
title_short Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep
title_sort having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in soay sheep
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9826142/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36063153
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14083
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