Concepts

Behaviors that reduce the likelihood of predation, including vigilance and evasion tactics

Survival of organisms through winter diapause or dormancy, often related to environmental conditions during overwintering

The concept that organisms face competing demands for limited resources during development that create trade-offs between different fitness components

The distance at which an individual initiates moving away from an approaching humans, reflecting flightiness of an animal in response to a potential predator

Population regulation mechanism where demographic rates depend on population density through competition and resource limitation

Time allocation to scanning for predators versus other activities like foraging, measured through specific postures and head orientations

The spatial arrangement and connectivity of subpopulations across a landscape that influences local population dynamics

Quantifiable aspects of social behavior and social structure that can be subject to natural selection

Demographic rates including survival, growth, flowering probability, seed production, and germination that determine population dynamics

Demographic models that project population dynamics using continuous size or stage distributions

The movement away from your place of birth and onto another location involving decision to depart, displacement, and settlement

Process by which animals become less responsive to repeated non-threatening stimuli over time

Random environmental variation that affects demographic parameters across all individuals in a population simultaneously

Social systems where individuals have flexibility in their social behaviors and group membership rather than being obligately social

Daily mass gain during critical post-emergence development period in juvenile mammals

tendency of an organism to stay in or habitually return to a particular area

Correlations between multiple repeatable, individually distinct behaviors that form consistent behavioral patterns across situations

The degree to which individuals can be discriminated from one another based on their vocalizations, quantified using information theory

Directed aggression toward conspecifics, increasing spatial distancing from or decreasing huddling with unfamiliar conspecifics

Reduction in reproductive output of individuals due to presence of other conspecifics, particularly older or dominant individuals

Probability of surviving the summer active season, measured by last sighting dates relative to seasonal cutoffs

Metabolites of stress hormones measured in fecal samples as a proxy for physiological stress levels

Mating system where males compete with one another over access to matelines consisting of groups of related females

The distribution of individuals across different size or age classes within a population

A within-individual process caused by deterioration in molecular and physiological function resulting in a decrease in survival probability and reproductive output with age

Social organization where related females remain together and males typically disperse

Positive social interactions and bonds between individuals including behaviors like grooming, playing, and proximity maintenance

A method to partition variance in population growth rate into contributions arising from temporal covariances of demographic parameters at different time lags

Scaled measure of how population growth rate responds to changes in environmental drivers

The average number of offspring produced by a typical individual during its life, calculated as the product of offspring number and survival probability

The likelihood that an individual survives from one time period to the next

The age at which females first reproduce, an important component of vertebrate life histories with effects on individual fitness and population dynamics

The degree to which an individual is integrated in their group based on the number of independent links to others in the group

Individual's reaction to a non-novel, risky situation

Winter survival strategy of some small mammals that may affect their vulnerability to avalanche disturbance depending on burrow depth and emergence timing

An aversion to novel stimuli, measured as latency to touch the puzzle box from stepping onto the platform

Number of nests per unit area, calculated by dividing number of nests in each habitat by total area

Hypothesis that populations may be buffered from adverse climatic effects when vital rates with high impacts on population growth exhibit the least temporal variability

Changes in social behavior and group dynamics that result from variation in the number of individuals in a social group

Measure of the level of inbreeding within a population, with values close to 1.0 indicating high levels of inbreeding

The proportion of male versus female offspring in a litter affecting prenatal hormone exposure

Pattern where male mammals tend to travel farther than females in exploratory excursions and disperse more than females

Proportional increase in body mass during the active growing season, calculated as August 15 body mass divided by June 1 body mass

Assumes that antipredator adaptations evolve together and thus prey may respond to extinct predators as long as they have experience with other predators.

The hypothesis that the more an individual interacts with others, the less likely they are to disperse

The correlation between different demographic parameters (survival, reproduction, productivity) measured across the same time periods within a population

Mortality from roadkill events where animals are struck and killed by vehicles

A survivorship pattern where approximately constant proportions of individuals survive through each age class

Growth pattern characterized by an initial period of mass gain followed by stabilization before hibernation entry