Meleagris gallopavo (Wild Turkey) population dynamics are greatly influenced by female survival, and high female-survival rates may offset low reproductive rates and maintain stability in populations characterized by low productivity. Additionally, reproduction may incur a cost to annual survival, given the physiological stress associated with breeding, and predation risks associated with incubation and brood-rearing. We used radio-telemetry and known-fate modeling to quantify annual survival and identify mortality causes of 54 adult female Meleagris gallopavo ssp. silvestris (Eastern Wild Turkey) tracked during 2002–2004 and 2007–2010 in a population characterized by low productivity in a bottomland hardwood forest in Louisiana. We detected 31 mortalities in which predation was the leading cause (87%), primarily attributed to Canis latrans (Coyote) and Lynx rufus (Bobcat). We estimated an annual survival rate of 0.58 (95% CI = 0.47–0.68) with no evidence of seasonal variation. This level of survival appeared to be sufficient to offset low productivity; the population was considered healthy and stable during the study period. Annual survival rates of females that incubated a nest were lower than reproductively inactive females, although confidence intervals overlapped considerably. The mechanisms underlying survival differences between reproductive classes were not entirely clear because survival of nesting females did not greatly decrease during incubation and brood-rearing seasons relative to non-nesters as would be expected under the hypothesis of increased predation risk during reproduction periods. Future studies should aim to better elucidate the links between reproduction and survival in Eastern Wild Turkey populations because this information will have important management ramifications in the southeast, where region-wide declines in productivity have been observed.
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1 June 2018
Survival and Cause-specific Mortality of Adult Female Eastern Wild Turkeys in a Bottomland Hardwood Forest
Michael E. Byrne,
Michael J. Chamberlain
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