Influence of reproductive output on divorce rates in polar seabirds.

Guillaume Mercier,Sébastien Descamps,Nigel G Yoccoz

doi:10.1002/ece3.7775

Guillaume Mercier, Sébastien Descamps + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7775

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Abstract

The high occurrence of social monogamy in birds has led to questions about partner fidelity, or the perennial nature of monogamy from one breeding season to another. Despite the evolutionary advantages of partner fidelity, divorce occurs among 95% of bird species. We aimed to describe patterns of divorce and partner fidelity in five seabird species breeding in Arctic and Antarctic regions and investigated the influence of breeding status on pair bond maintenance. For four out of the five species considered, we observed low divorce rates (respectively 1.9%, 3.3%, 2.5%, and 0.0% for Brünnich's guillemot, glaucous gull, Antarctic petrel, and south polar skua), while the divorce rate was much higher (19.1%) for the black‐legged kittiwake. For kittiwakes, the divorce rate was lower for pairs that managed to raise their chick to 15 days of age, while the effect of breeding success on divorce in the four other species could not be tested due to the rareness of divorce events. Our results emphasize the potentially large temporal (interannual) variations that should be taken into account in understanding divorce and partner fidelity in seabirds.

Highlights

The existence of monogamous mating systems in the animal kingdom has long been a topic of interest in evolutionary and behavioral ecology (Reichard, 2003)
The familiarity between faithful mates may be an important factor to achieve a successful breeding and raise offspring in these harsh and stochastic environments (Halimubieke et al, 2020). The aim of this present study was to describe partner fidelity and divorce patterns of five seabird species breeding in polar environments (Arctic and Antarctic)
We investigated the influence of breeding success on divorce, testing the prediction that divorce should be higher following a breeding failure

Summary

Introduction

The existence of monogamous mating systems in the animal kingdom has long been a topic of interest in evolutionary and behavioral ecology (Reichard, 2003). Defined as systems with an exclusive social relationship between one adult female and one adult male during a given reproductive event, socially monogamous mating systems are globally poorly represented in animals (Klug, 2018; Kvarnemo, 2018). They are almost absent in invertebrates (Mathews, 2002; McKeown & Shaw, 2008) and occur in few species of amphibians (Gillette et al, 2000; Tumulty et al, 2014), fish (Whiteman & Côte, 2004), and mammals (Lukas & Clutton-Brock, 2013). The reunion of the two individuals forming a pair from one breeding event to another, called partner fidelity or perennial monogamy, occurs heterogeneously in monogamous bird species

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