Bland Alexandra L, Plard Floriane, Giura Negru Bianca, Hernández-Pacheco Raisa
California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, California, USA.
Independent Freelance Researcher, Molompize, France.
J Anim Ecol. 2025 May;94(5):971-984. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.70028. Epub 2025 Mar 17.
The strength and direction of density-dependent mechanisms acting on individual reproduction and survival may vary across the nested levels of organization social animals live in, such that complex patterns of density dependence shape fitness and population growth. Yet knowledge of such processes of population regulation where individuals are simultaneously subjected to contrasting density effects remains limited. We quantify and contrast density effects on components of individual fitness across two nested levels of organization: the population and the social group, using 45 years of demographic data of rhesus macaques. Our analysis reveals opposing density feedback on individual reproduction and survival across levels of organization and shows that density does not affect all life stages equally. While increased population density reduced female reproduction during maturation, females in larger groups were more likely to reproduce. Infant survival was optimal at intermediate population densities, and monkeys in larger groups showed increased survival. Our work shows that population-level density effects on individual reproduction and survival can be as strong as group-level effects and suggests different roles of the philopatric (i.e. females) and dispersing (i.e. males) sexes on the regulation of individual demographic performance. In this way, our work posits testable mechanistic hypotheses for evaluating density effects on components of individual fitness and highlights the need to explicitly consider the organization and demographic structure of social animals when quantifying individual performance and population dynamics.
作用于个体繁殖和生存的密度依赖机制的强度和方向,可能会因群居动物所处的嵌套组织层次不同而有所变化,以至于复杂的密度依赖模式塑造了适合度和种群增长。然而,对于个体同时受到相反密度效应影响的种群调节过程,我们的了解仍然有限。我们利用恒河猴45年的种群统计数据,在种群和社会群体这两个嵌套组织层次上,对密度对个体适合度各组成部分的影响进行了量化和对比。我们的分析揭示了在不同组织层次上,密度对个体繁殖和生存存在相反的反馈,并表明密度对所有生命阶段的影响并不相同。虽然种群密度增加会降低雌性在成熟期间的繁殖率,但在较大群体中的雌性更有可能繁殖。幼崽存活率在中等种群密度时最佳,且在较大群体中的猴子存活率更高。我们的研究表明,种群水平的密度对个体繁殖和生存的影响可能与群体水平的影响一样强烈,并表明留居性(即雌性)和扩散性(即雄性)性别在调节个体种群统计表现方面具有不同作用。通过这种方式,我们的研究提出了可检验的机制假说,用于评估密度对个体适合度各组成部分的影响,并强调在量化个体表现和种群动态时,需要明确考虑群居动物的组织形式和种群结构。