The cost of reproduction: breeding season survival of female wild turkeys across the southeastern United States

Abstract Fitness trade-offs shape population dynamics and life-history evolution. The trade-off between reproductive effort and survival is critical among species, with female survival particularly influencing gallinaceous bird population trajectories. Eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris), a socially and economically important game species, have declined across their range. We estimated breeding season (1 March–31 August) survival probabilities for 942 GPS-tagged females from 2014 to 2023 across the southeastern USA to understand the reproductive effort survival trade-off in female wild turkeys. Breeding season survival was 0.67 (95% CRI: 0.56, 0.75) for reproductively active (i.e. egg-laying, incubating, brood-rearing) adults and 0.69 (95% CRI: 0.56, 0.78) for reproductively active juveniles. Conversely, our breeding season survival estimate was 0.76 (95% CRI: 0.66, 0.83) and 0.76 (95% CRI: 0.63, 0.85) for adults and juveniles that were non-reproductively active, respectively. When incubating, daily survival probabilities (DSPs) were lower earlier in the reproductive period, with a notable decline in DSP occurring during days 18–30 of incubation. Likewise, DSP was lower within the brood-rearing state but increased slightly as broods aged (during days 14–28). Our findings demonstrate a clear survival cost to reproduction in female wild turkeys and indicate that reproductive trade-offs may play an important role in maintaining female survival, and future research should focus on identifying the ecological and physiological mechanisms that underlie these costs.