Having a better home range does not reduce the cost of reproduction in Soay sheep.

ABSTRACT: A cost of reproduction may not be observable in the presence of environmental or individual heterogeneity because they affect the resources available to individuals. Individual space use is critical in determining both the resources available to individuals and the exposure to factors that mediate the value of these resources (e.g. competition and parasitism). Despite this, there has, to our knowledge, been little research to understand how between-individual differences in resource acquisition, caused by variation in space use, interact with environmental variation occurring at the population scale to influence estimates of the cost of reproduction in natural populations. We used long-term data from the St. Kilda Soay sheep population to understand how differences in age, relative home ra

SUBMITTER: Regan CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9826142 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature