technical paper
Cohort variation in aging patterns of roe deer females facing different ecological contexts
keywords:
environmental stochasticity
condition-dependence
early life
Reproductive senescence is increasingly reported to occur in vertebrate populations in the wild but how the onset and rate of reproductive senescence vary in response to environmental fluctuations remains poorly understood. Taking benefit on a long-term detailed individual monitoring of reproductive performance of known-aged females for over 35 years in a forest roe deer population in western France, we first provide firm evidence that both pregnancy rates and litter size display senescence, with different age at onset and different rate of senescence. Then, we show that cohort quality markedly influences reproductive senescence patterns. Moreover, condition-dependence of reproductive performance differs both across female ages and among cohorts of different quality.