Evidence of reduced individual heterogeneity in adult survival of long-lived species

Abstract

The canalization hypothesis postulates that the rate at which trait variation generates variation in the average individual fitness in a population determines how buffered traits are against environmental and genetic factors. The ranking of a species on the slow-fast continuum – the covariation among life-history traits describing species-specific life cycles along a gradient going from a long life, slow maturity, and low annual reproductive output, to a short life, fast maturity, and high annual reproductive output – strongly correlates with the relative fitness impact of a given amount of variation in adult survival. Under the canalization hypothesis, long-lived species are thus expected to display less individual heterogeneity in survival at the onset of adulthood, when reproductive values peak, than short-lived species. We tested this life-history prediction by analysing long-term time series of individual-based data in nine species of birds and mammals using capture-recapture models. We found that individual heterogeneity in survival was higher in species with short-generation time (< 3 years) than in species with long generation time (> 4 years). Our findings provide the first piece of empirical evidence for the canalization hypothesis at the individual level from the wild.