The Cost of Male Aggression and Polygyny in California Sea Lions (Zalophus californianus)

In polygynous mating systems, males often increase their fecundity via aggressive defense of mates and/or resources necessary for successful mating. Here we show that both male and female reproductive behavior during the breeding season (June–August) affect female fecundity, a vital rate that is an important determinant of population growth rate and viability. By using 4 years of data on behavior and demography of California sea lions (Zalophus californianus), we found that male behavior and spatial dynamics—aggression and territory size—are significantly related to female fecundity. Higher rates of male aggression and larger territory sizes were associated with lower estimates of female fecundity within the same year. Female aggression was significantly and positively related to fecundity both within the same year as the behavior was measured and in the following year. These results indicate that while male aggression and defense of territories may increase male fecundity, such interactions may cause a reduction in the overall population growth rate by lowering female fecundity. Females may attempt to offset male-related reductions in female fecundity by increasing their own aggression—perhaps to defend pups from incidental injury or mortality. Thus in polygynous mating systems, male aggression may increase male fitness at the cost of female fitness and overall population viability

Benefits of large broods by higher chick survival and better territories in a precocial shorebird

When reproductive success is constant in one breeding phase, different tactics that increase variation in reproductive success among individuals may evolve in other phases. For instance, in shorebirds, which usually have a limited clutch size of four eggs, variation in reproductive tactics among individuals is expected either before egg-laying (e.g. diverse mating systems) or after hatching of the young (e.g. diverse parental care). In this paper, I studied the pied avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta), a shorebird with a modal clutch size of four eggs, to test whether post-hatch chick adoption as an alternative tactic can be linked to increased variation in annual reproductive success. When predation was high, naturally adopting pairs produced more filial fledglings than did pairs not adopting chicks and not losing chicks to adoption. The number of filial fledglings increased with the number of adopted young, possibly through diluting the chances of predation on filial young. Experimental chick addition did not lead to more fledged young due to low brood integrity as shown by the frequent loss of chicks from some experimental broods. When predation was low, larger broods occupied feeding territories with higher prey abundance than smaller broods, possibly due to their dominance over smaller ones. Pairs that lost chicks to adoption (donors) fledged as many filial young in their broods as did non-adopters/non-donors, whereas the total number of donors' filial fledglings, including those raised in adopting broods, approached that of adopters. These findings show, for the first time, that post-hatch alternative reproductive tactics can lead to variation in annual reproductive success and to higher success for some pairs even in species where past adaptations limit variation in reproductive success in a certain phase of reproduction