Life histories and conservation of long-lived reptiles, an illustration with the American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus)

1. Successful species conservation is dependent on adequate estimates of population dynamics, but age-specific demographics are generally lacking for long-lived iteroparous species. Accurate demographic information allows estimation of population growth rate, as well as projection of future population sizes and quantitative analyses of fitness trade-offs involved in evolution of life-history strategies. 2. Here, a long-term capture-recapture study was conducted from 1978-2014 on the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) in southern Florida. Over the study period, 7,427 hatchlings were marked and 380 individuals were recaptured for as many as 25 years. We estimated survival to be strongly age-dependent with hatchlings having the lowest survival rates (16%) but increasing to nearly 90% at adulthood based on mark-recapture models. More than 5% of the female population were predicted to be reproductive by age 8 years; the age-specific proportion of reproductive females steadily increased u...