Interactive effects of exogenous and endogenous factors on demographic rates of an African rodent |
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| Authors: | Chloé R. Nater Cindy I. Canale Koen J. van Benthem Chi‐Hang Yuen Ivana Schoepf Neville Pillay Arpat Ozgul Carsten Schradin |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Dept of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, Univ. of Zurich, CH‐8057 Zurich, Switzerland;2. Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Dept of Biosciences, Univ. of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;3. School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, Univ. of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa;4. Inst. Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, Dépt d'Ecologie Physiologie et Ethologie, Strasbourg, France |
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| Abstract: | Exogenous and endogenous environmental factors can have simultaneous additive as well as interacting effects on life‐history traits. Ignoring such interactions can lead to a biased understanding of variability in demographic rates and consequently population dynamics. These interactions have been the focus of decades‐long debates on the mechanisms underlying small mammal population fluctuations. They have often been studied indirectly through seasonal effects, but studies considering them directly and more mechanistically are rare. We investigated the joint effects of exogenous (temperature, food availability) and endogenous (population density) factors on the demographic rates of a group‐living diurnal rodent, the African striped mouse Rhabdomys pumilio using nine‐year mark–recapture data from a population in the Succulent Karoo, South Africa. In general, higher temperatures and lower food availability were associated with higher survival, whereas high population densities were either beneficial or detrimental to survival depending on interacting food availability. High reproductive rates were related to lower temperatures, higher food availability and lower population density, and interactions among environmental factors mediated the strength of these relationships. Our study highlights the complex ways in which different environmental factors can interact to shape demographic rates and emphasizes the importance of explicitly including interactions among exogenous and endogenous factors into studies of population dynamics. |
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