Home range size and reproduction of female roe deer re-introduced into a Mediterranean habitat

Maillard, Daniel; Clément, Christophe; Invernia, Nathalie; Gaudin, Jean-Charles

doi:10.1007/bf02192408

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Contrary to theory (e.g., Griffith et al 1989;Wolf et al 1996;Fischer & Lindenmayer 2000), successes have been reported for small populations and across a wide range of demographic and environmental contexts. Departures from theory may occur because most studies of translocations use a single short-term metric to evaluate success, for example, postrelease survival (e.g., Maran et al 2009;Hamilton et al 2010;Linklater et al 2011) or fecundity (e.g., Maillard et al 2002;Dalbeck & Heg 2006;Ismail et al 2011). Survival and fecundity following release are only initial indicators of success.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of age and sex ratios on offspring recruitment rates in translocated black rhinoceros

Gedir

Law

Preez

et al. 2018

Conservation Biology

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Success of animal translocations depends on improving postrelease demographic rates toward establishment and subsequent growth of released populations. Short-term metrics for evaluating translocation success and its drivers, like postrelease survival and fecundity, are unlikely to represent longer-term outcomes. We used information theory to investigate 25 years of data on black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) translocations. We used the offspring recruitment rate (ORR) of translocated females-a metric integrating survival, fecundity, and offspring recruitment at sexual maturity-to detect determinants of success. Our unambiguously best model (AICω = 0.986) predicted that ORR increases with female age at release as a function of lower postrelease adult rhinoceros sex ratio (males:females). Delay of first postrelease reproduction and failure of some females to recruit any calves to sexual maturity most influenced the pattern of ORRs, and the leading causes of recruitment failure were postrelease female death (23% of all females) and failure to calve (24% of surviving females). We recommend translocating older females (≥6 years old) because they do not exhibit the reproductive delay and low ORRs of juveniles (<4 years old) or the higher rates of recruitment failure of juveniles and young adults (4-5.9 years old). Where translocation of juveniles is necessary, they should be released into female-biased populations, where they have higher ORRs. Our study offers the unique advantage of a long-term analysis across a large number of replicate populations-a science-by-management experiment as a proxy for a manipulative experiment, and a rare opportunity, particularly for a large, critically endangered taxon such as the black rhinoceros. Our findings differ from previous recommendations, reinforce the importance of long-term data sets and comprehensive metrics of translocation success, and suggest attention be shifted from ecological to social constraints on population growth and species recovery, particularly when translocating species with polygynous breeding systems.

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