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 ...