Data from: Increased reproductive investment associated with greater survival and longevity in Cassin’s auklets

Individuals increase lifetime reproductive output through a trade-off
between investment in future survival and immediate reproductive success.
This pattern may be obscured in certain higher quality individuals that
possess greater reproductive potential. The Cassin’s auklet (Ptychoramphus
aleuticus) is a long-lived species where some individuals exhibit greater
reproductive ability through a behavior called double brooding. Here, we
analyze 32 years of breeding histories from marked known-age auklets to
test whether double brooding increases lifetime fitness despite the
increased mortality and reduced lifespan higher reproductive effort would
be expected to incur. Multistate mark-recapture modeling revealed that
double brooding was strongly positively associated with higher annual
survival and longevity. Mean (95% CI) apparent survival was 0.69 (0.21,
0.91) for individuals that executed a single brood and 0.96 (0.84, 0.99)
for those that double brooded. Generalized linear mixed models indicated
individuals that attempted multiple double broods over their lifetime were
able to produce on average seven times as many chicks and live nearly six
years longer than birds that never attempted a double brood. We found that
high quality individuals exhibited both increased reproductive effort and
longevity, where heterogeneity in individual quality masked expected
life-history trade-offs.