Reproductive improvement and senescence in a long-lived bird

Heterogeneity within a population is a pervasive challenge for studies of individual life-histories. Population-level patterns in age-specific reproductive success can be broken down into relative contributions from selective disappearance, selective appearance of individuals into the study populati...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 107; no. 17; pp. 7841 - 7846
Main Authors Rebke, Maren, Coulson, Tim, Becker, Peter H, Vaupel, James W
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 27.04.2010
National Acad Sciences
Subjects
Age
Age Factors
Age groups
Aging - physiology
Animal reproduction
Animals
Aviculture
Biological Sciences
Birds
Breeding
Charadriiformes - growth & development
Ecological life histories
Genetics
Germany
Models, Biological
Observation
Population Dynamics
Reproduction - physiology
Reproductive success
Sea birds
Germany
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Summary:Heterogeneity within a population is a pervasive challenge for studies of individual life-histories. Population-level patterns in age-specific reproductive success can be broken down into relative contributions from selective disappearance, selective appearance of individuals into the study population, and average change in performance for survivors (average ontogenetic development). In this article, we provide an exact decomposition. We apply our formula to data on the reproductive performance of a well characterized population of common terns (Sterna hirundo). We show that improvements with age over most of adult life and senescence at old ages are primarily due to a genuine change in the mean among surviving individuals rather than selective disappearance or selective appearance of individuals. Average ontogenetic development accounts for approximately 87% of the overall age-specific population change.
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Author contributions: M.R., T.C., and J.W.V. designed research; M.R. performed research; M.R. analyzed data; M.R., T.C., P.H.B., and J.W.V. wrote the paper; and P.H.B. collected data.
Contributed by James W. Vaupel, March 3, 2010 (sent for review May 27, 2009)
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1002645107