Life-history trade-offs and environmental variability shape reproductive demography in a mountain ungulate.

ABSTRACT: Alpine ecosystems are changing rapidly with implications for the demography of alpine organisms. Here, we studied a sentinel species of mountain environments-the mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus)-to examine hypotheses about intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of reproductive demography using long-term data collected from individually marked animals across a broad spatiotemporal extent (n = 180 females, 3 study areas, 17 years) in coastal Alaska. Our analyses revealed the importance of life-history trade-offs and environmental variability on reproductive performance. The cost of reproduction, defined as the impact of reproducing the previous year on the probability of current year parturition, was high, especially for young, largely primiparous females (13%-32% reduction) and old, senescing i

SUBMITTER: White KS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12673250 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature