Immigration ensures population survival in the Siberian flying squirrel.

ABSTRACT: Linking dispersal to population growth remains a challenging task and is a major knowledge gap, for example, for conservation management. We studied relative roles of different demographic rates behind population growth in Siberian flying squirrels in two nest-box breeding populations in western Finland. Adults and offspring were captured and individually identifiable. We constructed an integrated population model, which estimated all relevant annual demographic rates (birth, local [apparent] survival, and immigration) as well as population growth rates. One population (studied 2002-2014) fluctuated around a steady-state equilibrium, whereas the other (studied 1995-2014) showed a numerical decline. Immigration was the demographic rate which showed clear correlations to annual population gr

SUBMITTER: Brommer JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5355189 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature