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BIOEVO-Evolusjonsbiologi og økologi

Variation in reproductive effort and cost in a sexually dimorphic ungulate: testing the Trivers-Willard and terminal investment hypotheses

Awarded: NOK 1.3 mill.

Determining the patterns and causes of variation in life-history strategies is one of the main goals of ecology, as such variation shapes both population dynamics and in turn the evolutionary biology of different species. However, good quality data of lon ger time-series are scarce, and it has so far proven difficult to lest evolutionary based hypotheses regarding patterns of parental effort and investments. Two key issues that remain unsettled are whether females with extra resources should bias investmen t towards sons in polygynous species (the Trivers-Willard hypothesis) and whether the investment should increase with increasing age (the terminal investmen t hypothesis). Reindeer is a species well suited for testing these hypotheses, as they are long-li ved and with a strong sexual-body size dimorphism. Access to a dataset from an experimental reindeer population monitored systematically from 1971 to present where all individuals and the maternal pedigree are known in details, including both estimates of reproductive effort and investments (i.e. effort r elative to costs), give us a unique opportunity to test these two hypothesis, as well as estimating the contribution of early life to future reproductive success and longevity.

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BIOEVO-Evolusjonsbiologi og økologi

Thematic Areas and Topics

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