Linking climate variability to demography in cooperatively breeding meerkats

Thorley, Jack ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8426-610X, Duncan, Chris, Manser, Marta B. and Clutton‐Brock, Tim (2025) Linking climate variability to demography in cooperatively breeding meerkats. Ecological Monographs, 95 (2). pp. 1-20. ISSN 0012-9615

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Abstract

Animal populations in arid environments, where extreme temperatures and erratic rainfall are normal, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. While numerous studies have examined the effects of temperature and rainfall on the breeding success and survival of arid-zone species, the mechanistic pathways linking climate variation to demography remain poorly described for most species. Using long-term data from meerkats (Suricata suricatta) in the Kalahari Desert, we show that increases in rainfall and primary productivity (as measured by normalized difference vegetation index) were associated with improved foraging success, daily body mass gain, and body condition, which in turn contributed to enhanced breeding success and survival. Conversely, high summer temperatures were associated with reduced foraging performance and body condition. Foraging efficiency declined when daily maximum summer temperatures exceeded 35°C, and at temperatures above 37°C, diurnal mass gains often failed to offset overnight mass losses. While high temperatures had short-term detrimental effects, runs of hot days were relatively infrequent and often coincided with periods of high primary productivity. As a result, individuals were rarely in poor condition during the hottest periods of the year, suggesting that they could recover any mass lost on hot days during subsequent cooler periods. Only when high temperatures persisted alongside low primary productivity did body condition drop sharply. Although temperature variation has not yet affected the demography of our meerkat population as strongly as rainfall variation, further warming in the region and the potential for more frequent and severe hot droughts are likely to have major implications for the species' distribution and persistence. Our study emphasizes the need to consider both rainfall and temperature variations across seasons, as well as their interactions, to better understand and predict the impacts of climate change on arid-zone animals. It also demonstrates the value of long-term, high-resolution behavioral and physiological data, including frequent, year-round weighing of animals, in establishing causal links between climate and demography.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Acknowledgments We thank the Kalahari Research Trust and the Kalahari Meerkat Project for providing access to facilities and habituated animals at the Kuruman River Reserve. We also thank the neighboring farmers for granting access to their land, as well as the many managers, volunteers, students, and researchers who contributed to the long-term data collection and curation efforts. Special thanks go to Zoe Turner for her help curating the foraging dataset, to Dr. Dave Gaynor for his feedback on our manuscript, and to Walter Jubber and Tim Vink for their efforts in managing the reserve and its databases. We also acknowledge the logistical support provided by the Mammal Research Institute and the ethics committee at Pretoria University, as well as the Northern Cape Department of Environment and Nature Conservation for permission to conduct the research (FAUNA 0930/2022). DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT Data and code (Thorley, Duncan, Manser, et al., 2025)are available on Dryad at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2ngf1vj11.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	climate change,cooperative breeding,drylands,foraging efficiency,foraging effort,global heating,mammal,primary productivity,reproduction,survival,temperature-dependent behavior,ecology, evolution, behavior and systematics ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1105
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2026 11:53
Last Modified:	17 Sep 2026 15:01
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/104576
DOI:	10.1002/ecm.70021

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