Abstract Fitness trade-offs shape population dynamics and life-history evolution. The trade-off between reproductive effort and survival is critical among species, with female survival particularly influencing gallinaceous bird population trajectories. Eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris), a socially and economically important game species, have declined across their range. We estimated breeding season (1 March–31 August) survival probabilities for 942 GPS-tagged females from 2014 to 2023 across the southeastern USA to understand the reproductive effort survival trade-off in female wild turkeys. Breeding season survival was 0.67 (95% CRI: 0.56, 0.75) for reproductively active (i.e. egg-laying, incubating, brood-rearing) adults and 0.69 (95% CRI: 0.56, 0.78) for reproductively active juveniles. Conversely, our breeding season survival estimate was 0.76 (95% CRI: 0.66, 0.83) and 0.76 (95% CRI: 0.63, 0.85) for adults and juveniles that were non-reproductively active, respectively. When incubating, daily survival probabilities (DSPs) were lower earlier in the reproductive period, with a notable decline in DSP occurring during days 18–30 of incubation. Likewise, DSP was lower within the brood-rearing state but increased slightly as broods aged (during days 14–28). Our findings demonstrate a clear survival cost to reproduction in female wild turkeys and indicate that reproductive trade-offs may play an important role in maintaining female survival, and future research should focus on identifying the ecological and physiological mechanisms that underlie these costs.
Bakner et al. (Wed,) studied this question.