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Yellow-bellied marmots do not compensate for a late start: the role of maternal allocation in shaping life-history trajectories

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Abstract

Yellow-bellied marmots, Marmota flaviventris, are obligate hibernators with a relatively short active season. Animals born earlier in the season have higher chances of fulfilling the energetic requirements to survive the long winter. Therefore, the onset of breeding should have a profound impact on juvenile survival. However, there are different ways to compensate for a late start. Late breeders might allocate more resources to late born offspring, making up for the bad start, or juveniles might show compensatory growth. They are not exclusive hypotheses and both can lead to juveniles entering hibernation with a similar body condition. We used data from a long term study in and around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado to test these two hypotheses. Animals are individually marked and trapped regularly. We compared mass at weaning, mass at the end of the season, growth rates and survival between animals born earlier and later in the season. We found no evidence of increased maternal input: late breeders had lighter offspring at weaning than early breeders, and late born juveniles did not increase their growth rates. Therefore, late born individuals ended the season with lower body mass, and were thus, less likely to survive the winter. In conclusion, life-history trajectories of juvenile yellow-bellied marmots were determined by maternal allocation, whereas post-weaning decisions did not modify their fate.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to all the marmoteers who helped in the data collection. R.M. was supported by postdoctoral fellowships from the Spanish Ministerio de Innovación y Ciencia and the Fulbright program. D.T.B was supported by the National Geographic Society, UCLA (Faculty Senate and the Division of Life Sciences), a Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory research fellowship, and by the NSF (IDBR-0754247 and DEB-1119660 to D.T.B., as well as DBI 0242960 and 0731346 to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory). All the procedures were studied under research protocol ARC 2001-191-01 as well as permits issued by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The research protocol was approved by the UCLA Animal Care Committee on 13 May 2002 and renewed annually. We thank two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments that helped us improve our paper.

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  1. Raquel Monclús

    Present address: Departamento de Biología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049, Madrid, Spain

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1606, USA

    Raquel Monclús, Benison Pang & Daniel T. Blumstein

  2. Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, P.O. Box 519, Crested Butte, CO, 81224, USA

    Raquel Monclús & Daniel T. Blumstein

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  1. Raquel Monclús
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  2. Benison Pang
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Correspondence to Raquel Monclús.

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Monclús, R., Pang, B. & Blumstein, D.T. Yellow-bellied marmots do not compensate for a late start: the role of maternal allocation in shaping life-history trajectories. Evol Ecol 28, 721–733 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-014-9705-z

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