Senescence and age-specific trade-offs between reproduction and survival in female Asian elephants

Abstract

Although studies on laboratory species and natural populations of vertebrates have shown reproduction to impair later performance, little is known of the age-specific associations between reproduction and survival, and how such findings apply to the ageing of large, long-lived species. Herein we develop a framework to examine population-level patterns of reproduction and survival across lifespan in long-lived organisms, and decompose those changes into individual-level effects, and the effects of age-specific trade-offs between fitness components. We apply this to an extensive longitudinal dataset on female semi-captive Asian timber elephants (Elephas maximus) and report the first evidence of age-specific fitness declines that are driven by age-specific associations between fitness components in a long-lived mammal. Associations between reproduction and survival are positive in early life, but negative in later life with up to 71% of later-life survival declines associated with investing in the production of offspring within this population of this critically endangered species.