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Les compromis à court et à long terme associés à la reproduction chez les ongulés femelles : l'exemple de la chèvre de montagne
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Hamel, Sandra |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | Long-lived species have developed a conservative reproductive strategy, where individuals produce few young per year and distribute their reproductive effort over several years. As individual state and environmental conditions vary during lifetime, différent factors can affect annual reproduction, and ultimately influence individual fitness as well as population dynamics. Using longitudinal data on wild populations of marked ungulates, particularly mountain goats, my thesis aim to détermine the shortand long-term trade-offs related to reproduction in females, while considering individual variability and environmental conditions, and to evaluate the effects of this variability on population dynamics. My results demonstrate that over the short-term females modify their foraging behaviour when lactating to increase food intake and compensate for the high energetic costs of lactation. Young females, however, face a fundamental trade-off between growth and lactation. Ultimately, females that produced a young have a lower probability of parturition the following year, and their new offspring has a lower probability of survival to one-year-old, compared with females that did not reproduce. In addition, thèse costs of reproduction are greater for low-quality and younger females than for high-quality and older females, respectively. The costs of reproduction also increase during years of high population density and poor environmental conditions. At a larger scale, my results show that individual variations in terms of survival and reproduction influence the dynamics of a population, and that older females have the greatest potential to influence the productivity of a population. My thesis provides a better understanding of the ultimate and proximate compromises that females must face when reproducing. As thèse trade-offs often resuit in fitness costs that vary with individual quality, this knowledge is essential to improve our compréhension of the variables upon which sélection occurs. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://corpus.ulaval.ca/jspui/bitstream/20.500.11794/20237/1/25657.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
