Breeding Biology and Demographic Traits: Population Parameters, Reproduction, and Survival

Life history theory predicts that species with large distributions, experiencing a variety of environmental and climatic conditions, should have developed a range of life history strategies across populations that typically spread over a slow-fast pace-of-life continuum. The European roller, breeding across three different continents and intensively studied since the second half of the twentieth century, enables testing this theory and its potential implications for population management and conservation. In this chapter, we therefore gather and summarize an unprecedented amount of unpublished and published data about the main breeding and demographic traits of the European roller and explore how these vary across the species range. We confirm previous studies showing that European populations of rollers have indeed developed a variety of life history strategies, ranging from slow populations with low fecundity and high survival in the north to fast populations with high fecundity and low survival in the south. We illustrate how understanding the pace-of-life of a population could refine the design of management and conservation programs and suggest directions for future research.