Data from: Trade-offs between age-related breeding improvement and survival senescence in highly polygynous elephant seals: dominant males always do better ...
Life history trade-off theory predicts that current reproduction can negatively affect survival and future reproduction. Few studies have assessed breeding costs for males of polygynous species compared to females, despite substantial variation in breeding success among individual males (e.g. subord...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | English |
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Dryad
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bcc2fqz7h https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.bcc2fqz7h |
| Summary: | Life history trade-off theory predicts that current reproduction can negatively affect survival and future reproduction. Few studies have assessed breeding costs for males of polygynous species compared to females, despite substantial variation in breeding success among individual males (e.g. subordinate cf. dominant breeders). Specifically, differentiating between the cost of attending breeding seasons, and the additional cost of successfully securing and mating females is lacking. We investigated whether trade-offs are present in the highly polygynous male southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) using 34-years of individual-level data. We compare age-specific survival, recruitment and future breeding success probabilities of pre-breeders (males yet to recruit) and breeders (subordinate and dominant social ranks) using multievent models. Pre-breeders and breeders of overlapping ages had similar survival probabilities, suggesting that there was no attendance cost for early recruits. In addition, the ... : All elephant seal pups weaned at Marion Island from 1983 to 2009 were uniquely marked with two plastic livestock tags applied to the hind flippers (n = 27 cohorts, 6245 male pups; Pistorius et al., 2011). Pups were tagged in the inner interdigital webbing from 1983 to 1999 and in the outer interdigital webbing from 2000 to 2009. From 1983 to 2016, all beaches where elephant seals bred were surveyed every seven days during the breeding season and every ten days outside of the breeding season. In total, 58 177 observations of marked male elephant seals were made over 34 years. A seal year began at the start of every breeding season and ended before the following breeding season. When a male elephant seal was resighted, one of nine events could be assigned to it: not seen (0); seen as a pre-breeder with two tags (1); seen as a pre-breeder with one tag (2); seen as a subordinate breeder with two tags (3); seen as a subordinate breeder with one tag (4); seen as a dominant breeder with two tags (5); seen as a ... |
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