Friday, February 6, 2015

Social and Ecology factors Influencing offsprings survivals

Date Published: October 17, 2014
Source: Behavioral Ecology: International Society for Behavioral Ecology
Summary:  This article illustrates how reproductive success is directly correlated to interactions amongst other fetuses as well as offsprings and other social and ecological factors. Essentially, reproductive success or fitness is classified by how many offsprings an organism can have and of those offsprings how many actually survive and create a new generation. The article highlights that many studies solely focus on either the pre natal stages or the post natal stages of an organism however its imperative to understand that it they are both intertwined and interdependent.

One of the major factors that are well known is the effect climate has on the survival of offsprings. When there is plentiful rainfall, the result is higher plant productivity, which then increases food availability. This is important when considering the health of the mother but also each of the offsprings since they will have lots of food available and there isn’t competition in regards to food. When thinking of the social aspect, this article shows that though females may have a certain amount of conflict and competition amongst each other, there is safety in numbers. Living with other females that have offsprings allows there to be more resources and more protection. This again increases the chances of survival. These are only a few basic examples of ecological and social factors influencing the fitness of a species.

The main idea of this study was to research and ecological and social factors that were prevalent in pre and postnatal offsprings which lead to the survival of macaques located in Sulawesi. The reason why this specie was chosen for this experiment is because they have an evident percent of infant mortality and there low predation pressure. Also this specie gives birth year rounds so the data flow would be constant. The experiment was conducted where the climate stay relatively constant through out the year. The rainfall was above average for this specie to survive. They tested their predictions with three groups over the span of 152 months.


The results that were collected conclude that social variables explain the survival rate because the more encounters the fetuses were involved in, the more likely they were to survive. This was unexpected because the prediction was that more encounters would encourage competition and add stress to the female decreasing the survival rate. The study did support the hypothesis that the environment also plays a role especially when talking about rainfall. Rainfalls lead to a greater among of fruits available, which lead to a healthier diet for both mother and offsprings. It was also noted that if the mother was presented, their offsprings would be more likely to survive because females were more aggressive in their means of protection. From this study, it can be summarized that ecological and social factors due influence fitness seen through the macaques species.


Citation: 

  • Antje Engelhardt, Behavioral Ecology (2014) 25 (5): 1164-1172 doi:10.1093/beheco/arue099



    1 comment:

    1. Based on what you've given us, this study seems to be very intriguing. Your introduction and summary of results are great. However, I would like to know more about the methodology and actual experiments conducted so we can get a better understanding of what the results mean in terms of the research done.

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