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	Breeding versus survival: proximate causes of abrupt population decline under environmental change in a desert rodent, the midday gerbil (Meriones meridianus)
	Tchabovsky Andrey; Savinetskaya Ludmila; Surkova Elena
来源期刊	Integrative Zoology
ISSN	1749-4869
出版年	2019
卷号	14 期号:4 页码:366-375
英文摘要	Studying abrupt ecological shifts under gradual environmental change caused, in particular, by human activity is important for understanding the fundamental aspects and underlying mechanisms of ecological resilience. One of the rare well-documented examples of an abrupt ecological shift is the delayed step transition of the population of a desert rodent, the midday gerbil (Meriones meridianus), from high-abundance (1994-2002)to low-abundance (2003-2017)regimes. This was in response to landscape transformation from desert to steppe caused by the drastic reduction of livestock in the rangelands of southern Russia after the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. In this study, we tested whether demographic parameters were correlated with the observed abrupt downward population shift. We found that reproductive activity (the percentage of breeding females, the number of litters, fecundity and the number of young recruited per female)showed no trend over time and did not differ between periods of high and low abundance. In contrast, the adult sex ratio (SR = males: females)decreased significantly with time and was as much as twice more female-biased for the low-abundance population regime. However, SR was not related to any reproductive parameter, including the percentage of breeding females. We conclude that proximate reasons for an abrupt population decline in M. meridianus are not associated with the changes in breeding patterns or mate limitation caused by the Allee effect but relate to the increased mortality as a result of the desert landscape being fragmented by steppezation. The mortality is expected to be higher for males as the mobile and dispersing sex.
英文关键词	demography landscape change rangelands reproduction threshold population dynamics
类型	Article
语种	英语
开放获取类型	Bronze
收录类别	CSCD
WOS研究方向	Life Sciences & Biomedicine - Other Topics
CSCD记录号	CSCD:6681874
资源类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.177/qdio/handle/2XILL650/336234
作者单位	Tchabovsky Andrey, Laboratory for Population Ecology, A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow Russia.; Savinetskaya Ludmila, Laboratory for Population Ecology, A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow Russia.; Surkova Elena, Laboratory for Population Ecology, A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow Russia.
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Tchabovsky Andrey,Savinetskaya Ludmila,Surkova Elena. Breeding versus survival: proximate causes of abrupt population decline under environmental change in a desert rodent, the midday gerbil (Meriones meridianus)[J],2019,14(4):366-375.
APA	Tchabovsky Andrey,Savinetskaya Ludmila,&Surkova Elena.(2019).Breeding versus survival: proximate causes of abrupt population decline under environmental change in a desert rodent, the midday gerbil (Meriones meridianus).Integrative Zoology,14(4),366-375.
MLA	Tchabovsky Andrey,et al."Breeding versus survival: proximate causes of abrupt population decline under environmental change in a desert rodent, the midday gerbil (Meriones meridianus)".Integrative Zoology 14.4(2019):366-375.