7
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Age-related variation in reproductive traits in the wandering albatross: evidence for terminal improvement following senescence.

      Ecology Letters
      Aging, physiology, Animals, Birds, genetics, Body Weight, Breeding, Female, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Maternal Age, Models, Biological, Multifactorial Inheritance, Ovum, Reproduction, Survival

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          The processes driving age-related variation in demographic rates are central to understanding population and evolutionary ecology. An increasing number of studies in wild vertebrates find evidence for improvements in reproductive performance traits in early adulthood, followed by senescent declines in later life. However, life history theory predicts that reproductive investment should increase with age as future survival prospects diminish, and that raised reproductive investment may have associated survival costs. These non-mutually exclusive processes both predict an increase in breeding performance at the terminal breeding attempt. Here, we use a 30-year study of wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) to disentangle the processes underpinning age-related variation in reproduction. Whilst highlighting the importance of breeding experience, we reveal senescent declines in performance are followed by a striking increase in breeding success and a key parental investment trait at the final breeding attempt. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Comments

          Comment on this article