The Influence of Alternate Life History Strategies and Natal Conditions on the Reproductive Performance of Adélie Penguins Breeding on Ross Island, Antarctica

• Main Author: Kappes, Peter J.
• Other Authors: Dugger, Katie M., Padman, Laurence, Langpap, Christian, Suryan, Robert M., Schumaker, Nathan H., Fisheries and Wildlife
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English; unknown
• Published: Oregon State University
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica; Ross Island
• Online Access: https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/bz60d273w

A fundamental objective of ecology and population biology is to identify factors that drive population dynamics and determine the population-level consequences of their interaction with the environment. Studies of reproductive performance can illuminate population dynamic processes, including the links between organismal biology, the environment, and life history theory. A central tenent of life history theory is that organisms face trade-offs when partitioning limited resources among growth, maintenance, survival, and lifetime reproductive potential. For long-lived species that have multiple breeding attempts during their lifetime (i.e., iteroparous species), these trade-offs can be observed in the age-related variation in reproductive performance associated with alternate breeding strategies, namely, variation in the age first reproduction/recruitment into the breeding population and lifetime reproductive potential. Understanding the consequences of this variation can provide insights into population dynamics and life history theory and is critical to predicting how individuals and thus populations are likely to respond to anthropogenic and natural changes in their environment. In Chapter 2, I used generalized linear mixed models to disentangle population and within-individual processes influencing observed patterns in age-specific reproductive performance. I tested the following five distinct patterns in breeding success as predicted by various life history hypotheses: 1) linearly increasing with breeding experience; 2) increasing with low levels of experience to a plateau; 3)increasing with low levels of experience to a plateau or peak near optimum performance with intermediate levels of experience, then increasing again in older age classes; 4) increasing with low levels of experience to a plateau or peak near optimum performance with intermediate levels of experience, then decreasing; or (5) remains constant. Overall patterns of reproductive performance were similar at all three colonies. Regardless of ...