Abstract
Resource availability is intricately linked to female reproductive success, and poor timing of reproduction can negatively impact maternal and/or infant survival. Thus, females should exhibit flexibility in the timing of reproduction that reflects local conditions. We examined eight years of data on births, conceptions, mating seasonality, and interbirth intervals (IBIs) in relation to food availability, weather, and female dominance rank in three groups of vervets (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) living in a forest-agriculture matrix near Lake Nabugabo, Uganda. Births (N = 126) occurred year-round but were moderately seasonal (61.1% of births in October-December). The degree of seasonality varied slightly between groups. However, there was no survival difference for infants born within or outside of birth peaks. Fruit availability did not vary seasonally, nor did feeding on either natural or anthropogenic foods. IBI did not vary between groups but was shorter than those of other wild populations, with most females breeding in successive years. Higher-ranking females had shorter IBIs than lower-ranking females. The moderate breeding seasonality and shorter IBIs in the Nabugabo vervets compared with other populations may relate to habitat differences and latitudinally-variable factors. The maintenance of a birth peak despite consistent food availability suggests vervets and other primates may be phylogenetically constrained, which prohibits adapting to changing environmental conditions, such as climate change.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Community Nkima Project – Nabugabo: Dr. Dennis Twinomugisha, Matovu Ponsyano, Katwere Livingstone, and Hillary Tashobya for assistance with long-term data collection, and the community of Bbaale where our research takes place. They are grateful to Karin Snyder for permission to use some of her MSc data on female agonism, and Aurelia Niissima, Justine Namuyomba, and the Primate Behavioural Endocrinology Lab for assistance with behavioural data entry. Finally, thanks to editor Dr. Jo Setchell, associate editor Dr. Onja Razafindratsima, and the anonymous reviewers who provided constructive comments to improve this manuscript.
Funding
Funding for this project is thanks in part to a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Undergraduate Student Research Award to MAS, as well as NSERC and York University to VAMS and the Canada Research Chairs Program, Wildlife Conservation Society, NSERC, and the National Geographic to CAC. The Wilson Center supported CAC during the writing phase of this project.
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Handling Editor: Joanna M. Setchell
Badge earned for open practices: Open Data. Experiment materials and data are available in the repository at Figshare (reproduction data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14866146, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19312373; weather data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14847750; food availability data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14847726; dominance data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14866233). Code is available on Figshare (https://figshare.com/articles/software/Schwegel_et_al_R_scripts/19665339) and on GitHub (https://mschweg.github.io/VervetBreeding2020/).
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Schwegel, M.A., Filazzola, A., Chapman, C.A. et al. Breeding Seasonality in Female Vervet Monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) Living in an Anthropogenic Landscape. Int J Primatol 44, 45–70 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-022-00313-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-022-00313-y