Sex-specific patterns of reproductive senescence in a long-lived reintroduced raptor

1) For many species there is evidence that breeding performance changes as an individual ages. In iteroparous species, breeding performance often increases through early-life and is expected to level out or even decline (senesce) later in life. Furthermore, an individual’s sex and conditions experienced in early-life can affect breeding performance and how this changes with age.
2) Long-term monitoring of individuals from reintroduced populations can provide unique opportunities to explore age-related trends in breeding performance that might otherwise be logistically challenging.
3) We used a unique dataset from a reintroduced population of white-tailed eagles Haliaeetus albicilla in Scotland, which has been intensively monitored since their initial reintroduction in 1975, to study age- and sex-specific trends in two measures of breeding performance. This monitoring provided data on breeding performance of known individuals ranging in age from 3 to 26 years old. We also explored chan...