Journal article
Experimental manipulation of female reproduction demonstrates its fitness costs in kangaroos
U Gélin, ME Wilson, G Coulson, M Festa-Bianchet
Journal of Animal Ecology | WILEY | Published : 2015
Abstract
Summary: When resources are scarce, female mammals should face a trade-off between lactation and other life-history traits such as growth, survival and subsequent reproduction. Kangaroos are ideal to test predictions about reproductive costs because they may simultaneously lactate and carry a young, and have indeterminate growth and a long breeding season. An earlier study in three of our five study populations prevented female eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) from reproducing during one reproductive season by either inserting contraceptive implants or removing very small pouch young. We explored how individual and environmental variables affect the costs of reproduction over time..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by Faculty of Science Animal Ethics Committee of the University of Melbourne
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Jemma Cripps, Sarah Garnick, Wendy King, Elise Rioux-Paquette, Dave Forsyth, Malie Lessard-Therrien, Ben Moore, Sarah Way, Rochelle Egan, Jane McKenzie, Natasha McLean, Jean-Loup Rault, Antoine Wystrach and all volunteers for help in the field. We are grateful for the logistic support received from Parks Victoria, the Anglesea Golf Club and Melbourne Water. We particularly thank Michael Smith and Matthew Wills for their support at Serendip Sanctuary. Atle Mysterud and two anonymous referees provided constructive reviews of a previous version of the manuscript. Financial support for our macropod research was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Parks Victoria Research Partners Panel, the Centre de la Science de la Biodiversite du Quebec, the Universite de Sherbrooke, the Australian Research Council Linkage Program, CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology and the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment. Animal handling and experimental procedures were approved by the Animal Care Committee of the Universite de Sherbrooke (protocol MFB-2012-2) and by the Faculty of Science Animal Ethics Committee of the University of Melbourne (Projects 486-004-0-92-1157, 654-125-0-94-1617 & 06146).