Sex-specific plasticity in Alpine ibex migration timing
View abstract on PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.Male Alpine ibex show greater migration timing plasticity than females, adapting to vegetation changes. This difference diminishes in experienced migrants, suggesting complex factors beyond reproduction influence migration.
Area Of Science
- Ecology
- Animal Behavior
- Conservation Biology
Background
- Migration timing is crucial for herbivores tracking vegetation phenology.
- Climate change increases environmental variability, impacting migration.
- Individual plasticity in migration decisions is understudied.
Purpose Of The Study
- Investigate environmental drivers of migration timing in Alpine ibex.
- Assess sex-specific plasticity in migration phenology.
- Understand population-level consequences of adaptive migration.
Main Methods
- Analysis of long-term movement data from 17 Alpine ibex populations.
- Focus on individual variation in migration timing.
- Integration of environmental data, including vegetation phenology.
Main Results
- Males exhibit greater behavioral plasticity in migration timing than females.
- Female plasticity is potentially constrained by forage-predation trade-offs.
- Sex differences in plasticity disappear in experienced (repeat) migrants.
Conclusions
- Migratory plasticity is influenced by a complex interplay of factors including reproductive status, experience, social environment, and heat stress.
- Individual-level monitoring is essential for understanding migration patterns and plasticity.
- Behavioral variation is key to population resilience in changing environments.
Related Concept Videos
Migration is long-range, seasonal movement from one region or habitat to another. This common strategy, carried out by many different organisms around the world, is an adaptive response that typically corresponds to changes in an organism’s environment, like resource availability or climate. Migrations can involve huge groups of thousands of animals as well as single individuals traveling alone and can range from thousands of kilometers to just a few hundred meters.
Why Animals Migrate
Gastrulation establishes the three primary tissues of an embryo: the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. This developmental process relies on a series of intricate cellular movements, which in humans transforms a flat, “bilaminar disc” composed of two cell sheets into a three-tiered structure. In the resulting embryo, the endoderm serves as the bottom layer, and stacked directly above it is the intermediate mesoderm, and then the uppermost ectoderm. Respectively, these tissue strata...
Overview
Speciation usually occurs over a long evolutionary time scale, during which the species may be isolated or continue to interact. If two emerging species start to interbreed, reproductive barriers may be weak, and gene flow can occur again. At this point, the selection of hybrids across the two populations may either stabilize the newly mixed group into a single population or reinforce the distinction between them as new species. Speciation may occur gradually or rapidly, and in some...
Although the genetic makeup of an organism plays a major role in determining the phenotype, there are also several environmental factors, such as temperature, oxygen availability, presence of mutagens, that can alter an organism’s phenotype.
An example of how genetic background affects phenotype can be seen in horses. The Extension gene in horses is responsible for their coat color. A wild-type gene (EE) produces black pigment in the coat, while a mutant gene (ee) produces red pigment. A...
During embryogenesis, cells become progressively committed to different fates through a two-step process: specification followed by determination. Specification is demonstrated by removing a segment of an early embryo, “neutrally” culturing the tissue in vitro—for example, in a petri dish with simple medium—and then observing the derivatives. If the cultured region gives rise to cell types that it would normally generate in the embryo, this means that it is specified. In...

