Raising offspring increases ageing: Differences in senescence among three populations of a long-lived seabird, the Atlantic puffin

1. Actuarial senescence, the decline of survival with age, is well documented in the wild. Rates of senescence vary widely between taxa, to some extent also between sexes, with the fastest life histories showing the highest rates of senescence. Few studies have investigated differences in senescence among populations of the same species, although such variation is expected from population-level differences in environmental conditions, leading to differences in vital rates and thus life histories.
2. We predict that, within species, populations differing in productivity (suggesting different paces of life) should experience different rates of senescence, but with little or no sexual difference in senescence within populations of monogamous, monomorphic species where the sexes share breeding duties.
3. We compared rates of actuarial senescence among three contrasting populations of the Atlantic puffin Fratercula arctica. The data set comprised 31 years (1990–2020) of parallel capture-mark..., ,