An integrative study of marmot responses to ecotourism
Abstract
Human disturbance in the form of ecotourism alters behavior many species and may impact fitness but few studies take an integrative approach to quantify impact in various ways to test for variation in physiological, behavioral, and consequential life history and demographic traits. We extended a previous study on antipredator behavior for yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventer) by controlling for natural predation and by splitting the data by marmot age group. In addition, we tested the assumption between altered behavior and a decreased fitness by analyzing different physiological traits. Using the same 2009 disturbance data of vehicles, hikers, bicycles, and dogs as the previous study, we analyzed the relationship between the different types of disturbance with the variables of stress, mass gain, summer survival, and annual survival from that same year. We fit models to each age class for each type of disturbance for each variable. We found that, across all variables, juvenile marmots were most sensitive to human disturbance. Behavioral traits were more sensitive to variation in human disturbance than physiological traits. Mass gain rate, a fitness correlate, was relatively impacted by disturbance, but does not impact overall marmot fitness. Despite behavioral and some physiological impacts of human visitation, variation in visitation does not explain marmots’ likelihood of surviving the summer or to the next year. This suggests that marmots are compensating for behavioral modifications, the mechanisms of which are not yet known.
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