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Do Equids Live longer than Grazing Bovids?

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Abstract

A large part of the diversity of longevity and actuarial senescence (i.e., the progressive decline of survival probabilities with age) across vertebrates can be related to body size, phylogeny, and the species’ position on the slow-fast continuum of life histories. However, differences in mortality patterns between ecologically similar species, such as bovids and equids, remain poorly understood. Equids are commonly understood to outlive bovid species relative to their body mass, despite very similar feeding niches. Comparing survival patterns of 13 bovid and ten equid sub-species, our findings confirm that equids outlive bovid species, with a higher adult survival rate and a delayed onset of senescence for equids, but no difference of rate of actuarial senescence. These differences are associated with a slower generation time and longer inter-birth interval, due to a longer gestation period, for equids compared to bovids. Finally, our results suggest that all biological times (i.e., all life history traits expressed in time units) have evolved synchronously in bovids, whereas in equids gestation time and inter-birth interval either were never in synchrony with, or have slowed down relative to other biological times. Our findings suggest the existence of different selection pressures, or different constraints, on specific time-related traits between these two mammalian families.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the many people who generously provided data on live weights and on the animals’ life histories so that we could carry out the analyses with confidence, in particular Kristin Brabender (Hortobagy National Park, Hungary), Frédéric Joly (previously with Takh, France), Jim Kao (Taipei Zoo), Klaus Mueller-Schilling (Hannover Zoo), Peter Novellie (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa), Kate Schoenecker (US Geological Survey, USA), Juan Soy (Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation, Qatar), Beatrice Steck (Basel Zoo, Switzerland), Tim Thier and Martha Fischer (St. Louis Zoo, USA), and Tim Woodfine, Tanya Langenhorst and Danielle Free (Marwell Wildlife, UK) who provided data on liveweights, and/or on the animals’ life histories; and Patricia Moehlman and Sarah King (IUCN Equid Specialist Group), Jan Robovsky (Liberec Zoo and University of South Bohemia, Czechia), Ulrike Rademacher (Stuttgart Zoo, Germany), Belinda Low Mackey (Grevy’s Zebra Trust, USA) and Laurent Tatin (Conservatoire des Espaces Naturels, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France) who kindly linked us to sources of knowledge. We are grateful to one anonymous referee for helpful comments on a previous draft. Finally, we dedicate this paper to Colin Groves, posthumously, for his great contribution to our knowledge of equids.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univeristé de Lyon; CNRS, UMR5558, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, F-69622, Lyon, France

    Morgane Tidière, Jean-François Lemaître & Jean-Michel Gaillard

  2. Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, Station d’Ecologie de Chizé-La Rochelle, UMR 7173 CNRS, 79360, Villiers-en-Bois, France

    Patrick Duncan

  3. World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), Carrer de Roger de Llúria, 2, 2-2, Barcelona, Spain

    Laurie Bingaman Lackey

  4. Zoological Garden Halle (Saale), Fasanenstr. 5a, 06114, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Dennis W. H. Müller

  5. Clinic for Zoo Animals, Exotic Pets and Wildlife, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstr. 260, 8057, Zurich, Switzerland

    Marcus Clauss

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  1. Morgane Tidière
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  2. Patrick Duncan
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Correspondence to Morgane Tidière.

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Tidière, M., Duncan, P., Lemaître, JF. et al. Do Equids Live longer than Grazing Bovids?. J Mammal Evol 27, 809–816 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-019-09483-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-019-09483-8

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