CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 61Animal Behavior and ReproductionWildlife Ecology and ConservationEvolution and Paleontology Studies

Great ranging associated with greater reproductive investment in mammals.

Open access
Pontzer, Herman, Kamilar, Jason M.·2009·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI 10.1073/pnas.0806105106PMC PMC2629235
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Most animals must travel to find food, incurring an unavoidable energy and time cost. Economic theory predicts, and experimental work confirms, that within species, increasing the distance traveled each day to find food has negative fitness consequences, decreasing the amount of energy invested in maintenance, repair, and reproduction. Here, we show that this relationship between daily distance traveled and reproductive success is fundamentally different between species and over evolutionary time in many lineages. Phylogenetically controlled analyses of 161 eutherian mammals indicate that, after controlling for body mass, evolutionary increases in the daily distance traveled are associated with corresponding increases in both total fertility (number of offspring per lifetime) and total offspring mass (grams of offspring per lifetime). This suggests that over evolutionary time, increasing travel distance is often part of a strategy for procuring more food energy and not necessarily a response to decreased food availability. These results have important implications for ecological comparisons among species, including assessments of habitat quality based on locomotor behavior.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1073/pnas.0806105106

Cites

57 of 57 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Species' metabolic rates reflect their evolutionary history, as TEE responds over evolutionary time to ecological pressures such as food availability and predation risk.

    “A growing body of work on mammalian metabolism is revealing that species’ metabolic rates reflect their evolutionary history, as TEE responds over evolutionary time to ecological pressures such as food availability and predation risk [49], [50].”

    From Hunter-gatherer energetics and human obesity (2012) · cites this paper as [49]

  • Several comparative studies have suggested a continuum of energy-use strategies among mammals, from high-energy throughput to low, with each species' strategy contingent upon the particular dynamics of food availability and mortality risk it faces.

    “Indeed, several comparative studies have suggested a continuum of energy-use strategies among mammals, from high-energy throughput to low, with each species’ strategy contingent upon the particular dynamics of food availability and mortality risk it faces (1, 4–6).”

    From Metabolic adaptation for low energy throughput in orangutans. (2010) · cites this paper as [6]

  • If food availability is highly variable or if foraging incurs the risk of predation, it may be advantageous to decrease DEE, even at the cost of decreased reproductive rates, to avoid starvation or predation.

    “Conversely, if food availability is highly variable or if foraging incurs the risk of predation, it may be advantageous to decrease DEE, even at the cost of decreased reproductive rates, to avoid starvation or predation (5, 6).”

    From Metabolic adaptation for low energy throughput in orangutans. (2010) · cites this paper as [6]

  • If increased throughput is linked to decreased variance in food availability as proposed previously, the adoption of provisioning behaviors may ultimately explain why human reproductive rates diverged from those of other hominoids.

    “If increased throughput is linked to decreased variance in food availability as proposed previously (4, 6), the adoption of provisioning behaviors may ultimately explain why human reproductive rates diverged from those of other hominoids.”

    From Metabolic adaptation for low energy throughput in orangutans. (2010) · cites this paper as [6]

  • Decreased energy throughput is thought to be a risk-averse strategy for minimizing the probability of starvation in habitats where food availability is highly variable, unpredictable, and prone to long periods of shortage.

    “Decreased energy throughput is thought to be a risk-averse strategy for minimizing the probability of starvation in habitats where food availability is highly variable, unpredictable, and prone to long periods of shortage (4–6).”

    From Metabolic adaptation for low energy throughput in orangutans. (2010) · cites this paper as [6]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [49]Midford PE, Garland T, Maddison WP. PDAP: PDTREE package for Mesquite. [Accessed September 1, 2008];2007 version 1.1. Available at http://mesquiteproject.org/pdap_mesquite/ [Google Scholar]

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Pontzer, H., & Kamilar, J. M.
Affiliations
  • Washington University in St. Louis (US)
  • Harvard University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Published
2009-01-06
Volume
106
Issue
1
Pages
192-196
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
DOI
10.1073/pnas.0806105106
PMC
PMC2629235
OpenAlex
W2004829928
Cited by
61
References
57
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 8 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 9
FWCI
2.87
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Evolution and Paleontology Studies
Keywords
daily travel distance, reproductive investment, total fertility rate, placental mammals, locomotor behavior, food procurement, energy allocation, phylogenetic comparative analysis, habitat quality, evolutionary trade-offs
MeSH terms
Animals, Biological Evolution, Feeding Behavior, Fertility, Litter Size, Locomotion, Mammals, Phylogeny, Reproduction, Species Specificity, Body Size

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review