Banded mongooses: Demography, life history, and social behavior

Cant, Michael A.; Nichols, Hazel J.; Thompson, Faye J.; Vitikainen, Emma I. K.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781107338357.019

Cited by 57 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…We conducted our study between September 1999 and March 2014 on a long‐term study population of banded mongooses on the Mweya Peninsula in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda (0°12′S, 27°54′E). Cant, Vitikainen, and Nichols () and Cant, Nichols, Thompson, and Vitikainen (), and references therein, provide detailed descriptions of our study site and banded mongoose biology. Here, we provide information about both specific to this study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Banded mongooses (Figure ) are diurnal carnivores (<2 kg) that live in stable, mixed‐sex groups of around 10–30 individuals and whose diet mainly consists of small invertebrates (Rood, ). Individuals sexually mature around the age of 1 year (Cant et al., ) and all individuals within a group reproduce to some extent, though contributions to reproduction are skewed toward older individuals (Nichols, Amos, Cant, Bell, & Hodge, ; Nichols, Bell, Hodge, & Cant, ). Their average lifespan is around 3.5 years (males = 42 months, females = 38 months, max = 149 months, Cant et al., ), and survival rates are constant across all ages (Cant et al., ; Marshall et al., ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We defined an individual's “early life” to be its first year of development based on growth and age at sexual maturity. Banded mongooses’ major growth phase occurs in their first year (zone i in Figure ), and 1 year is also the approximate age at which females become regular breeders and males first obtain paternity (Cant et al., ). In addition, the pattern of rainfall at our study site operates over a 12‐month period: two wet seasons, one shorter (March–May) and one longer (August–December), divided by two dry seasons (January–February and June–July; Figure a, Marshall et al., ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lifetime fitness consequences of early‐life ecological hardship in a wild mammal population

Marshall

Vitikainen

Mwanguhya³

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Early‐life ecological conditions have major effects on survival and reproduction. Numerous studies in wild systems show fitness benefits of good quality early‐life ecological conditions (“silver‐spoon” effects). Recently, however, some studies have reported that poor‐quality early‐life ecological conditions are associated with later‐life fitness advantages and that the effect of early‐life conditions can be sex‐specific. Furthermore, few studies have investigated the effect of the variability of early‐life ecological conditions on later‐life fitness. Here, we test how the mean and variability of early‐life ecological conditions affect the longevity and reproduction of males and females using 14 years of data on wild banded mongooses (Mungos mungo). Males that experienced highly variable ecological conditions during development lived longer and had greater lifetime fitness, while those that experienced poor early‐life conditions lived longer but at a cost of reduced fertility. In females, there were no such effects. Our study suggests that exposure to more variable environments in early life can result in lifetime fitness benefits, whereas differences in the mean early‐life conditions experienced mediate a life‐history trade‐off between survival and reproduction. It also demonstrates how early‐life ecological conditions can produce different selection pressures on males and females.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lifetime fitness consequences of early‐life ecological hardship in a wild mammal population

Marshall

Vitikainen

Mwanguhya³

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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“…(Gibbens, Parry, & Arnould, 2010), 12. (Cant, Nichols, Thompson, & Vitikainen, 2016), 13. (Mongoose Research Project, pers comms), 14.…”

Section: Creating Life Tables: Survivalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Postreproductive lifespans are rare in mammals

Ellis

Franks

Nattrass

et al. 2018

Ecology and Evolution

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104

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A species has a post‐reproductive stage if, like humans, a female entering the adult population can expect to live a substantial proportion of their life after their last reproductive event. However, it is conceptually and statistically challenging to distinguish these true post‐reproductive stages from the usual processes of senescence, which can result in females occasionally surviving past their last reproductive event. Hence, despite considerable interest, the taxonomic prevalence of post‐reproductive stages remains unclear and debated. In this study we use life tables constructed from published data on wild populations of mammals, and statistical measures of post‐reproductive lifespans, to distinguish true post‐reproductive stages from artefacts of senescence and demography in 52 species. We find post‐reproductive stages are rare in mammals and are limited to humans and a few species of toothed whales. By resolving this long‐standing debate, we hope to provide clarity for researchers in the field of evolutionary biology and a solid foundation for further studies investigating the evolution and adaptive significance of this unusual life history trait.

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“…We also verified that the proportional hazard was independent of time using plots of the scaled Schoenfeld residuals. We constructed 14 competing models (see Table 2), all of which contained sex (coded as female = 0, male = 1) because males tend to have a longer lifespan (Cant, Nichols, Thompson, & Vitikainen, 2016). We used mean monthly rainfall in the first year of life as a predictor variable in a subset of models because it is associated with prey abundance and thereby influences lifespan (Marshall et al, 2017).…”

Section: Survival Beyond Nutritional Independencementioning

confidence: 99%

A high‐quality pedigree and genetic markers both reveal inbreeding depression for quality but not survival in a cooperative mammal

et al. 2018

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Inbreeding depression, the reduced fitness of offspring of closely related parents, is commonplace in both captive and wild populations and has important consequences for conservation and mating system evolution. However, because of the difficulty of collecting pedigree and life-history data from wild populations, relatively few studies have been able to compare inbreeding depression for traits at different points in the life cycle. Moreover, pedigrees give the expected proportion of the genome that is identical by descent (IBD ) whereas in theory with enough molecular markers realized IBD can be quantified directly. We therefore investigated inbreeding depression for multiple life-history traits in a wild population of banded mongooses using pedigree-based inbreeding coefficients (f ) and standardized multilocus heterozygosity (sMLH) measured at 35-43 microsatellites. Within an information theoretic framework, we evaluated support for either f or sMLH as inbreeding terms and used sequential regression to determine whether the residuals of sMLH on f explain fitness variation above and beyond f . We found no evidence of inbreeding depression for survival, either before or after nutritional independence. By contrast, inbreeding was negatively associated with two quality-related traits, yearling body mass and annual male reproductive success. Yearling body mass was associated with f but not sMLH, while male annual reproductive success was best explained by both f and residual sMLH. Thus, our study not only uncovers variation in the extent to which different traits show inbreeding depression, but also reveals trait-specific differences in the ability of pedigrees and molecular markers to explain fitness variation and suggests that for certain traits, genetic markers may capture variation in realized IBD above and beyond the pedigree expectation.

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Banded mongooses: Demography, life history, and social behavior

Cited by 57 publications

References 81 publications

Lifetime fitness consequences of early‐life ecological hardship in a wild mammal population

Lifetime fitness consequences of early‐life ecological hardship in a wild mammal population

Postreproductive lifespans are rare in mammals

A high‐quality pedigree and genetic markers both reveal inbreeding depression for quality but not survival in a cooperative mammal

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