Gone girl: Richardson's ground squirrel offspring and neighbours are resilient to female removal.

ABSTRACT: Within matrilineal societies, the presence of mothers and female kin can greatly enhance survival and reproductive success owing to kin-biased alarm calling, cooperation in territory defence, protection from infanticidal conspecifics, joint care of young and enhanced access to resources. The removal of mothers by predators or disease is expected to increase the stress experienced by offspring via activation of their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, increasing circulating glucocorticoids and reducing offspring survival and reproductive success. Yet, few studies have removed mothers in the post-weaning period to examine the assumed physiological and fitness consequences associated with these mortality events. We examined how the loss of a mother affects juvenile Richardson's ground squir

SUBMITTER: Freeman AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6774953 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature