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Higher reproductive success of small males and greater recruitment of large females may explain strong reversed sexual dimorphism (RSD) in the northern goshawk

  • Population ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Reversed sexual dimorphism (RSD), which occurs when the female of a species is larger than the male, is the rule for most birds of prey but the exception among other bird and mammal species. The selective pressures that favour RSD are an intriguing issue in animal ecology. Despite the large number of hypotheses proposed to explain the evolution of RSD, there is still no consensus about the mechanisms involved and whether they act on one or both sexes, mainly because few intrapopulation studies have been undertaken and few raptor species have been investigated. Using the strongly size-dimorphic northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis L.) as a model, we studied a population with one of the highest densities of breeding pairs reported in the literature in order to understand selective pressures that may favour RSD. We evaluated life-history processes, including recruitment of adult breeders and reproductive success, and we explored the mechanisms thought to act on each sex, including hunting efficiency, diet, body condition and mate choice. We found that smaller males produced more fledglings than larger ones, but there was no relationship between size and reproductive success for females. The mean body size of female breeders was larger than that of female fledglings, but male fledglings and breeders did not differ in size. Male body size was related to the type but not to the amount of prey captured during the nestling stage. We conclude that RSD may be favoured in this goshawk population because small males tend to enjoy higher reproductive success and large females greater recruitment. Our results do not support the hypotheses that evolutionary reduction in male size is driven by hunting efficiency, at least during the nestling stage, or the hypotheses that it is driven by greater recruitment. Our findings also suggest that increase in female size is driven by recruitment, rather than by reproductive success as previously postulated.

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Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Enrique de la Montaña, Miguel Rebollo, Pablo Rebollo, Jorge Meltzer, Mar Zurita and Sofía Morcelle for their great help with field work; to Victor García-Matarranz from the Dirección General para la Biodiversidad of the Spanish Ministerio de Medio Ambiente for assistance in goshawk trapping; and to the Grupo de Anillamiento Aeghitalos for their help in goshawk ringing. We are grateful to Pedro Villar, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Ignacio Morales, Patrik Byholm, Risto Tornberg, Armando Chapin Rodríguez, Mónica Díaz-Otero and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments on the manuscript, and to Santiago Mañosa for allowing us to use his figures in the Electronic supplementary material. We acknowledge the Dirección Xeral de Conservación da Natureza of the Xunta de Galicia for granting permission to carry out the study. This research was supported by funds from CICYT projects of the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (CGL2007-60533/BOS and CGL2010-18312/BOS), and the REMEDINAL network (S-0505/AMB/0335 and S2009 AMB-1783). GGS and SMH were supported by FPU and FPI fellowships from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (AP2006-00891 and BES-2008-006630, respectively).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecology and Forest Restoration Group, Department of Life Sciences, University of Alcalá, Sciences Building, 28805, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

    L. Pérez-Camacho, G. García-Salgado, S. Rebollo & S. Martínez-Hesterkamp

  2. Castrelo-Cela 59, 36930, Bueu, Pontevedra, Spain

    J. M. Fernández-Pereira

Authors
  1. L. Pérez-Camacho
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  2. G. García-Salgado
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  3. S. Rebollo
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  4. S. Martínez-Hesterkamp
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  5. J. M. Fernández-Pereira
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Correspondence to L. Pérez-Camacho.

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Communicated by Markku Orell.

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Pérez-Camacho, L., García-Salgado, G., Rebollo, S. et al. Higher reproductive success of small males and greater recruitment of large females may explain strong reversed sexual dimorphism (RSD) in the northern goshawk. Oecologia 177, 379–387 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-3146-9

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