The timing of breeding and independence for snow leopard females and their cubs
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The timing of breeding and independence for snow leopard females and their cubs Örjan Johansson1,2 · Giorgia Ausilio1 · Matthew Low3 · Purevjav Lkhagvajav4 · Byron Weckworth5 · Koustubh Sharma2 Received: 3 June 2020 / Accepted: 29 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Significant knowledge gaps persist on snow leopard demography and reproductive behavior. From a GPS-collared population in Mongolia, we estimated the timing of mating, parturition and independence. Based on three mother–cub pairs, we describe the separation phase of the cub from its mother as it gains independence. Snow leopards mated from January–March and gave birth from April–June. Cubs remained with their mother until their second winter (20–22 months of age) when cubs started showing movements away from their mother for days at a time. This initiation of independence appeared to coincide with their mother mating with the territorial male. Two female cubs remained in their mothers’ territory for several months after initial separation, whereas the male cub quickly dispersed. By comparing the relationship between body size and age of independence across 11 solitary, medium-to-large felid species, it was clear that snow leopards have a delayed timing of separation compared to other species. We suggest this may be related to their mating behavior and the difficulty of the habitat and prey capture for juvenile snow leopards. Our results, while limited, provide empirical estimates for understanding snow leopard ecology and for parameterizing population models. Keywords Age of independence · Life-history trade-offs · Panthera uncia · Parental care · Pre-dispersal behavior · Separation · Subadult
Introduction
Handling editor: Francesco Ferretti. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s42991-020-00073-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Örjan Johansson [email protected] 1
Grimsö Wildlife Research Station, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Riddarhyttan, Sweden
2
Snow Leopard Trust, Seattle, USA
3
Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
4
Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
5
Panthera, New York, USA
Parental investment theory postulates that parents should support current offspring if the genetically weighted benefits to the offspring’s fitness outweigh the costs to the mother’s (Hamilton 1964; Trivers 1972). This is likely to be influenced by many ecological factors, including resource availability (Fuller and Sievert 2001; Kvarnemo et al. 1998; Whittingham and Robertson 1994), mating system and seasonality (Russell et al. 2004; Szekely and Cuthill 2000), social organization (Moehlman 1989; Royle et al. 2012) and the developmental period of the offspring (Olson et al. 2008). Termination of parental care results in increasing separation between the parents and offspring and—unless the offspring take over the parents’ ho
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