Multifaceted density dependence: Social structure and seasonality effects on Serengeti lion demography

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.14158. This is version 5 of this Preprint.

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Authors

Eva Conquet , Maria Paniw, Natalia Borrego, Chloé R. Nater , Craig Packer, Arpat Ozgul

Abstract

Interactions between density and environmental conditions have important effects on vital rates and consequently on population dynamics and can take complex pathways in species whose demography is strongly influenced by social context, such as the African lion, Panthera leo. In populations of such species, the response of vital rates to density can vary depending on the social structure (e.g., effects of group size or composition). However, studies assessing density dependence in populations of lions and other social species have seldom considered the effects of multiple socially-explicit measures of density, and—more particularly for lions—of nomadic males. Additionally, vital-rate responses to interactions between the environment and various measures of density remain largely uninvestigated. To fill these knowledge gaps, we aimed to understand how a socially- and spatially-explicit consideration of density (i.e., at the local scale) and its interaction with environmental seasonality affect vital rates of lions in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. We used a Bayesian multistate capture-recapture model and Bayesian GLMMs to estimate lion stage-specific survival and between-stage transition rates, as well as reproduction probability and recruitment, while testing for season-specific effects of density measures at the group and home-range levels. We found evidence for several such effects. For example, resident-male survival increased more strongly with coalition size in the dry season compared to the wet season and adult-female abundance affected subadult survival negatively in the wet season, but positively in the dry season. Additionally, while our models showed no effect of nomadic males on adult-female survival, they revealed strong effects of nomads on key processes such as reproduction and takeover dynamics. Therefore, our results highlight the importance of accounting for seasonality and social context when assessing the effects of density on vital rates of Serengeti lions and of social species more generally.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X2XC7F

Subjects

Population Biology

Keywords

Density dependence, , density-environment interactions, sociality, Bayesian models, multistate capture-recapture models, African lion demography, density-environment interactions, sociality, Bayesian models, multistate capture-recapture models, African lion demography

Dates

Published: 2023-10-27 10:11

Last Updated: 2024-08-13 12:14

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License

CC-By Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Language:
English

Conflict of interest statement:
None.

Data and Code Availability Statement:
The processed data and MCMC samples necessary for reproducing results and graphs presented in this study will be available in the Dryad Digital Repository. Original data can be requested from Craig Packer (packer@umn.edu). Code for implementing and running models and analyses, and plotting results is available on GitHub: https://github.com/EvaCnqt/LionsDensity. The version of code used for this study will be archived on Zenodo.