Dominance is a primary determinant of social dynamics and resource access in social animals. Recent studies show that dominance is also reflected in the gene regulatory profiles of peripheral immune cells. However, the strength and direction of this relationship differs across the species and sex combinations investigated, potentially due to variation in the predictors and energetic consequences of dominance status. Here, we i...

Climate change and climate‐driven increases in infectious disease threaten wildlife populations globally. Gut microbial responses are predicted to either buffer or exacerbate the negative impacts of these twin pressures on host populations. However, examples that document how gut microbial communities respond to long‐term shifts in climate and associated disease risk, and the consequences for host survival, are rare. Over the...

The fate of natural populations is mediated by complex interactions among vital rates, which can vary within and among years. Although the effects of random, among‐year variation in vital rates have been studied extensively, relatively little is known about how periodic, nonrandom variation in vital rates affects populations. This knowledge gap is potentially alarming as global environmental change is projected to alter common...

The structure of wild animal social systems depends on a complex combination of intrinsic and extrinsic drivers. Population structuring and spatial behaviour are key determinants of individuals’ observed social behaviour, but quantifying these spatial components alongside multiple other drivers remains difficult due to data scarcity and analytical complexity. We used a 43‐year dataset detailing a wild red deer population to in...

Dispersal is a key ecological process that influences the dynamics of spatially and socially structured populations and consists of three stages—emigration, transience, and settlement—and each stage is influenced by different social, individual, and environmental factors. Despite our appreciation of the complexity of the process, we lack a firm empirical understanding of the mechanisms underlying the different stages. Here, us...

Studies of eusocial invertebrates regard complex societies as those where there is a clear division of labour and extensive cooperation between breeders and helpers. In contrast, studies of social mammals identify complex societies as those where differentiated social relationships influence access to resources and reproductive opportunities. We show here that, while traits associated with social complexity of the first kind o...

Demographic senescence is increasingly recognised as an important force shaping the dynamics of wild vertebrate populations. However, our understanding of the processes that underpin these declines in survival and fertility in old age remains limited. Evidence for age‐related changes in foraging behaviour and habitat use is emerging from wild vertebrate studies, but the extent to which these are driven by within‐individual cha...

Temporal changes in phenological traits arising as a consequence of recent rapid environmental change have been widely demonstrated in animal populations. Increasingly, studies are seeking to understand the impact of changes in such traits on individual fitness and population dynamics, with the ultimate aim of predicting population persistence or extinction under different climate scenarios. Here, we examined the effects of en...

Mating between relatives often results in negative fitness consequences or inbreeding depression. However, the expression of inbreeding in populations of wild cooperative mammals and the effects of environmental, maternal and social factors on inbreeding depression in these systems are currently not well understood. This study uses pedigree‐based inbreeding coefficients from a long‐term study of meerkats ( Suricata suricatta )...

Recent changes in the seasonal timing (phenology) of familiar biological events have been one of the most conspicuous signs of climate change. However, the lack of a standardized approach to analysing change has hampered assessment of consistency in such changes among different taxa and trophic levels and across freshwater, terrestrial and marine environments. We present a standardized assessment of 25 532 rates of phenologica...

There are multiple paths via which environmental variation can impact herbivore ecology and this makes the identification of drivers challenging. Researchers have used diverse approaches to describe the association between environmental variation and ecology, including local weather, large‐scale patterns of climate, and satellite imagery reflecting plant productivity and phenology. However, it is unclear to what extent it is p...

We used long‐term data on movements, survival, and reproduction of female red deer ( Cervus elaphus Linnaeus) of the Isle of Rum, Scotland (1970–2001), to explain variation in life history (age at maturity) from a hind's access to habitat resources and exposure to local density, and cross‐generational (maternal) effects on observed relationships. We described each hind's use of resources relative to availability in the study a...

Comparative analyses of survival senescence by using life tables have identified generalizations including the observation that mammals senesce faster than similar‐sized birds. These generalizations have been challenged because of limitations of life‐table approaches and the growing appreciation that senescence is more than an increasing probability of death. Without using life tables, we examine senescence rates in annual ind...

Identifying traits that affect the reproductive success of individuals is fundamental for our understanding of evolutionary processes. In cooperative breeders, a dominant male typically restricts mating access to the dominant female for extended periods, resulting in pronounced variation in reproductive success among males. This may result in strong selection for traits that increase the likelihood of dominance acquisition, do...

Tradeoffs between reproduction and somatic maintenance are a frequently cited explanation for reproductive senescence in long‐lived vertebrates. Between‐individual variation in quality makes such tradeoffs difficult to detect and evidence for their presence from wild populations remains scarce. Here, we examine the factors affecting rates of senescence in maternal breeding performance in a natural population of red deer ( Cerv...