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503

Body mass change over winter is consistently sex-specific across roe deer (*Capreolus capreolus*) populationsuse asterix (*) to get italics
Mark Hewison, Nadège Bonnot, Jean-Michel Gaillard, Petter Kjellander, Jean-François Lemaitre, Nicolas Morellet & Maryline PellerinPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"
2024
<p>In most polygynous vertebrates, males must allocate energy to growing secondary sexual characteristics, such as ornaments or weapons, that they require to attract and defend potential mates, impacting body condition and potentially entailing fitness costs.&nbsp;</p> <p>We investigated sex differences in over winter body mass change across five intensively monitored populations of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) with markedly contrasting environmental conditions. At winter onset, males weighed, on average, 8.4% (from 4.7% in the most northerly population to 11.6% in the most southerly one) more than females. However, across all populations, males fared worse over the winter than females, losing more (Sweden) or gaining less (France) mass, so that sexual mass dimorphism was virtually absent prior to the onset of spring.&nbsp;</p> <p>Our findings reveal that the direction of over-winter change in mass of roe deer depends on winter severity, but that males are consistently more sensitive to this environmental constraint than females. As a result of this sex-specific change in body mass, sexual mass dimorphism is lowest at the onset of the territorial season. We suggest that allocation to antler growth and territory establishment drives this pattern, providing a likely explanation to account for the lower rates of male adult survival that are consistently reported in this weakly dimorphic species.</p>
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10997219You should fill this box only if you chose 'All or part of the results presented in this preprint are based on data'. URL must start with http:// or https://
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10997219You should fill this box only if you chose 'Scripts were used to obtain or analyze the results'. URL must start with http:// or https://
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10997219You should fill this box only if you chose 'Codes have been used in this study'. URL must start with http:// or https://
sexual selection, weapon, ungulate, costs of reproduction, sexual dimorphism
NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).
Behaviour & Ethology, Life history
Marco Apollonio (marcoapo@uniss.it), Atle Mysterud (atle.mysterud@ibv.uio.no), Phillip Stephens (philip.stephens@durham.ac.uk) No need for them to be recommenders of PCIEcology. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct
e.g. John Doe [john@doe.com]
2022-09-16 15:41:53
Denis Réale