Affiliation:
1. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada.
Abstract
Migration is well developed among mammals, but there has been little attempt to date to review common ecological constraints that may guide the evolution of migration among mammals, nor to consider its prevalence across different taxa. Here we review several alternate hypotheses for the evolution of migration in mammals based on improvements in energetic gain and mate-finding contrasted with reduction in energetic costs or the risk of predation and parasitism. While there are well-documented examples of each across the order Mammalia, the available evidence to date most strongly supports the energy gain and predation risk hypotheses in the terrestrial realm, whereas a combined strategy of reducing energetic costs in one season but improving energetic gain in another season seems to characterize aquatic mammal species, as well as bats. We further discuss behavioral and physiological specialization and provide a taxonomic cross section of mammalian migration.
Publisher
Canadian Science Publishing
Subject
Animal Science and Zoology,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Cited by
132 articles.
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