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22 February 2020 What are the main drivers of survival and recruitment in tropical forest marsupials? A 16-year study
Mariana Silva Ferreira, Rui Cerqueira, Marcus Vinícius Vieira
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

Tropical forest marsupials exhibit large interannual variation in population sizes, with direct negative density dependence capturing the essential features of their dynamics. However, the demographic mechanisms underlying population growth rate and driving both survival and reproduction are still unclear. We used a 16-year capture-mark-recapture data set for five tropical forest marsupials to test for seasonal and interannual density dependence in survival and recruitment. Hypotheses regarding the effects of exogenous (rainfall and minimum temperature) factors on survival, recruitment, and reproductive parameters (fecundity, litter size, and proportion of reproductive females) were also tested. Population size negatively affected survival in three of five species. High population sizes in a given year reduced survival rates in the following year, with strong detrimental effects on males. Recruitment and proportion of reproductive females were highly dependent on weather variables, and were not affected by previous population sizes (except for Metachirus nudicaudatus). Fecundity (number of female offspring/female) was related negatively to population size only in the black-eared opossum (Didelphis aurita), while litter size was a relatively conservative parameter, largely independent of external conditions. Our analyses indicate that density-dependent survival is the mechanism that regulates population size of tropical forest marsupials, either through a reduction in survival or an increase in emigration rates. This general regulatory mechanism may be common to other marsupials in the Atlantic Forest and other tropical forests.

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society of Mammalogists, www.mammalogy.org.
Mariana Silva Ferreira, Rui Cerqueira, and Marcus Vinícius Vieira "What are the main drivers of survival and recruitment in tropical forest marsupials? A 16-year study," Journal of Mammalogy 101(2), 515-525, (22 February 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyaa013
Received: 19 September 2019; Accepted: 22 January 2020; Published: 22 February 2020
KEYWORDS
Atlantic forest
capture-mark-recapture
demography
mortality
population dynamics
population regulation
reproduction
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