Red squirrels living in Canada’s Yukon Territory can have a pretty tough life. They face significant reproductive risks due to harsh winters, resource scarcity, intense competition for habitat, threats from large predators like the Canada lynx, and genetic suitability. All of these stressors take a huge toll on these resilient rodents. Their childhood struggles can also leave a lasting mark. The more difficulties a young red squirrel faces in the year it is born, the shorter its adult lifespan. For more information on the survey results, please visit The study was published April 24 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences And it may have some impact on humanity.
food boom
The red squirrel is Approximately 11 inches long and weighs just over 0.5 pounds on average. They are known for their rust-colored fur. “Chat of reprimand” on the trees. The new study uses data collected by. Kluang Red Squirrel Project, a long-term field study conducted by multiple universities. The project has been tracking and studying thousands of wild North American red squirrels in the southwestern Yukon Territory for more than 30 years, tagging and tracking each individual red squirrel individually and tracking everything it throws at it. We’re looking into how you’re dealing with it.
new study Analysis of the observations revealed that red squirrels that survive past the first year of life live about 3.5 years on average. However, early life adversity, such as food insecurity, can reduce life expectancy by at least 14%.
[Related: A Medieval strain of leprosy is infecting squirrels in the UK.]
“The red squirrel ecosystem in this region is unique,” says study co-author Lauren Petrullo, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. stated in a statement. “Every three to seven years, their favorite food, the seeds from white spruce cones, is produced in excess during what we call food booms.”
The research team found that although such food booms are rare, they disrupt some of the squirrels’ biological processes and may help shape their lifespans.
“Even if a squirrel’s first year of life was tough, if they were lucky enough to experience a food boom in their second year of life, they lived just as long, if not longer, despite their early adversity.” ,” Petrullo said. .
Rodents as surrogates
Rodents such as squirrels, rice, and mats are often used as human models in laboratory settings. However, laboratory settings often have limited relevance to the big picture of what is happening at the ecological and evolutionary level.
“It can be difficult to actually recreate in the lab the ecological challenges that animals have evolved to deal with,” Petrullo says.
Wild red squirrels may offer scientists an opportunity to better study the role played by their early environment. Petrullo and his colleagues hope that continued observations in the wild will allow them to learn more about the biological mechanisms linking squirrels’ early development and later survival. This may yield some insights into our understanding of human resilience.
[Related: Nature wasn’t healing: What really happened with wildlife during pandemic lockdowns.]
“Our findings in red squirrels reflect what we know about how early life adversity shortens adult lifespans in humans and other primates,” Petrullo said. . “Humans vary widely in how vulnerable or resilient they are to the challenges they face early in development. This suggests that this may be an important factor in explaining why people seem to be more susceptible to early life adversity.”
“Born with a silver spoon”
Growing up as a young red squirrel in the Yukon can be very difficult, but there are some things that go well.
“Some red squirrels have the good fortune of being born into a more benign early environment, similar to being born with a silver spoon,” says Petrullo. “Therefore, there is tremendous individual variation in early environmental quality across natural ecological settings.”
However, as global temperatures continue to rise, this environment is expected to change significantly.There is a possibility that Food booms and other ecological patterns It may change with climate, and so may the relationship between childhood experiences and lifespan. These changes could provide more insight into how animals continue to adapt to environments where survival becomes increasingly difficult, Petrullo said. Future research could also help scientists learn more about what environmental factors can buffer squirrels from ongoing environmental threats.
