Is it sexual mass dimorphism season? - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue Peer Community In Ecology Année : 2024

Is it sexual mass dimorphism season?

Résumé

In most polygynous vertebrates, males must allocate energy to growing secondary sexual characteristics, such as ornaments or weapons, that they require to attract and defend potential mates, impacting body condition and potentially entailing fitness costs. We investigated sex differences in over winter body mass change across five intensively monitored populations of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) with markedly contrasting environmental conditions. At winter onset, males weighed, on average, 8.4% (from 4.7% in the most northerly population to 11.6% in the most southerly one) more than females. However, across all populations, males fared worse over the winter than females, losing more (Sweden) or gaining less (France) mass, so that sexual mass dimorphism was virtually absent prior to the onset of spring. Our findings reveal that the direction of over-winter change in mass of roe deer depends on winter severity, but that males are consistently more sensitive to this environmental constraint than females. As a result of this sex-specific change in body mass, sexual mass dimorphism is lowest at the onset of the territorial season. We suggest that allocation to antler growth and territory establishment drives this pattern, providing a likely explanation to account for the lower rates of male adult survival that are consistently reported in this weakly dimorphic species.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
Hewison_PCI.pdf (1.45 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origine Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte
Licence

Dates et versions

hal-04732541 , version 1 (11-10-2024)

Licence

Identifiants

Citer

A J Mark Hewison, Nadège C Bonnot, Jean-Michel Gaillard, Petter Kjellander, Jean-François Lemaître, et al.. Is it sexual mass dimorphism season?. Peer Community In Ecology, 2024, ⟨10.24072/pci.ecology.100503⟩. ⟨hal-04732541⟩
0 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

More