Registered users receive a variety of benefits including the ability to customize email alerts, create favorite journals list, and save searches.
Please note that a BioOne web account does not automatically grant access to full-text content. An institutional or society member subscription is required to view non-Open Access content.
Contact helpdesk@bioone.org with any questions.
Infanticide occurs in a diversity of taxa and may provide benefits to the perpetrator through nutritional gain, reduced competition, or increased fitness from mating opportunities through sexually selected infanticide (SSI). Infanticide, however, is rarely observed. We documented a probable infanticide event by a 23-year-old adult male polar bear (Ursus maritimus) on a 3-month-old cub in western Hudson Bay, Canada, during the spring of 2023. We subsequently documented a 21-year-old solitary female who was lactating and in breeding condition with swollen labia, suggesting polar bears return to estrous quickly in the absence of cubs. Using the literature, we examined the relationships among polar bear cub-of-the-year, adult male survival, and the ratio of male/female mortality. We suggest SSI as the plausible explanation for the infanticide event observed and discuss how indirect effects from climate change may affect the prevalence of infanticide as a mechanism regulating polar bear populations.
This article is only available to subscribers. It is not available for individual sale.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have
purchased or subscribe to this BioOne eBook Collection. You are receiving
this notice because your organization may not have this eBook access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users-please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
Additional information about institution subscriptions can be foundhere