Evidence of reduced individual heterogeneity in adult survival of long-lived species.
Péron G., Gaillard J-M., Barbraud C., Bonenfant C., Charmantier A., Choquet R., Coulson T., Grosbois V., Loison A., Marzolin G., Owen-Smith N., Pardo D., Plard F., Pradel R., Toïgo C., Gimenez O.
The canalization hypothesis postulates that the rate at which trait variation generates variation in the average individual fitness in a population determines how buffered traits are against environmental and genetic factors. The ranking of a species on the slow-fast continuum - the covariation among life-history traits describing species-specific life cycles along a gradient going from a long life, slow maturity, and low annual reproductive output, to a short life, fast maturity, and high annual reproductive output - strongly correlates with the relative fitness impact of a given amount of variation in adult survival. Under the canalization hypothesis, long-lived species are thus expected to display less individual heterogeneity in survival at the onset of adulthood, when reproductive values peak, than short-lived species. We tested this life-history prediction by analysing long-term time series of individual-based data in nine species of birds and mammals using capture-recapture models. We found that individual heterogeneity in survival was higher in species with short-generation time (< 3 years) than in species with long generation time (> 4 years). Our findings provide the first piece of empirical evidence for the canalization hypothesis at the individual level from the wild.