McLoughlin P D, Gaillard J M, Boyce M S, Bonenfant C, Messier F, Duncan P, Delorme D, Van Moorter B, Saïd S, Klein F
Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, 112 Science Place, Saskatoon SK S7N5E2, Canada.
Ecology. 2007 Dec;88(12):3192-201. doi: 10.1890/06-1974.1.
The relationship between individual performance and nonrandom use of habitat is fundamental to ecology; however, empirical tests of this relationship remain limited, especially for higher orders of selection like that of the home range. We quantified the association between lifetime reproductive success (LRS) and variables describing lifetime home ranges during the period of maternal care (spring to autumn) for 77 female roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) at Trois-Fontaines, Champagne-Ardenne, France (1976-2000). We maintained population growth rate (adjusted to account for removals of non-focal animals) near rmax, which enabled us to define the fitness-habitat relationship in the absence of density effects. Using a negative binomial model, we showed that a roe deer's incorporation into its home range of habitat components important to food, cover, and edge (meadows, thickets, and increased density of road allowances) was significantly related to LRS. Further, LRS decreased with increasing age of naturally reclaimed meadows at the time of a deer's birth, which may have reflected a cohort effect related to, but not entirely explained by, a decline in quality of meadows through time. Predictive capacity of the selected model, estimated as the median correlation (rs) between predicted and observed LRS among deer of cross-validation samples, was 0.55. The strength of this relationship suggests that processes like selection of the site of a home range during dispersal may play a more important role in determining fitness of individuals than previously thought. Individual fitness of highly sedentary income breeders with high reproductive output such as roe deer should be more dependent on home range quality during the period of maternal care compared to capital breeders with low reproductive output. Identification of the most important habitat attributes to survival and reproduction at low density (low levels of intraspecific competition) may prove useful for defining habitat value ("intrinsic habitat value").
个体表现与栖息地的非随机利用之间的关系是生态学的基础；然而，对这种关系的实证检验仍然有限，尤其是对于像家域这样的更高层次的选择。我们对法国香槟 - 阿登省特鲁瓦丰泰讷的77只雌性狍（Capreolus capreolus）在母育期（春季至秋季）的终生繁殖成功率（LRS）与描述终生家域的变量之间的关联进行了量化（1976 - 2000年）。我们将种群增长率（调整以考虑非焦点动物的移除）维持在接近rmax的水平，这使我们能够在没有密度效应的情况下定义适合度 - 栖息地关系。使用负二项式模型，我们表明狍将对食物、掩护和边缘（草地、灌木丛以及道路沿线密度增加）重要的栖息地成分纳入其家域与LRS显著相关。此外，LRS随着鹿出生时自然恢复草地年龄的增加而下降，这可能反映了一种与草地质量随时间下降相关但并未完全由其解释的队列效应。所选模型的预测能力，估计为交叉验证样本中鹿的预测LRS与观察到的LRS之间的中位数相关性（rs）为0.55。这种关系的强度表明，在扩散期间选择家域地点等过程在决定个体适合度方面可能比以前认为的发挥更重要的作用。与繁殖输出低的资本繁殖者相比，像狍这样具有高繁殖输出的高度定居的收入繁殖者的个体适合度在母育期应该更依赖于家域质量。识别低密度（种内竞争水平低）下对生存和繁殖最重要的栖息地属性可能有助于定义栖息地价值（“内在栖息地价值”）。
