Researchers examined 9 to 63 years of lay dates and parturition dates as well as the number of offspring produced for 21 wild bird and mammal species across the globe, and found that optimum breeding dates often fluctuated and depended on taxa, species, and population; in some populations, females adjusted their breeding dates between years to track the optimum breeding date to an extent, resulting in partial buffering of natural-selection-related variability, according to the authors.
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Article #20-09003: "Fluctuating optimum and temporally variable selection on breeding date in birds and mammals," by Pierre de Villemereuil, Elyès Jouini, Clotilde Napp, and Georgia Thebault.
MEDIA CONTACT: Pierre de Villemereuil, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, FRANCE; e-mail: < pierre.devillemereuil@ephe.psl.eu >; Luis-Miguel Chevin, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Montpellier, FRANCE; e-mail: < luis-miguel.chevin@cefe.cnrs.fr >
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences