Why breed every other year? The case of albatrosses

Albatrosses exhibit extremely low reproductive rates, each pair brooding only one egg and subsequent chick at a time. Furthermore, in several of the species, the majority of successful pairs breed only once every second year (termed 'biennial' breeding). Thus, on average, these latter species have an annual fecundity of about half an offspring per year, while other albatrosses produce an egg and chick every year. Using our 40-year bank of demographic data, we compared 12 species of albatrosses according to these two breeding strategies to examine potential causes of biennial breeding. Biennial breeding could be due to physiological constraints, larger animals breeding more slowly, or ecological constraints, more distant pelagic feeding trips being energetically costly, or both. We tested these hypotheses by looking for predicted associations between the duration of the rearing period, the distance to the oceanic feeding zone and breeding frequency. We also looked for associations of these variables with other life-history traits. Body size had a strong influence on the duration of the rearing period, but not on the distance that birds travelled to the feeding zone. Both the duration of the rearing period and distance to the feeding zone appeared to have direct influences on breeding frequency, as revealed by a path analysis, and thus both hypotheses to explain biennial breeding were supported. Finally, breeding frequency exhibited a strong trade-off with adult survival and age at maturity, indicating that slower breeders live through more breeding seasons, perhaps mitigating their lower annual reproductive output.