Linking climate variability, productivity and stress to demography in a long-lived seabird
نویسندگان
چکیده
We examined the reproductive ecology of black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla in several breeding colonies in the North Pacific to test if inter-annual changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Winter Ice Cover (ICI), or local sea-surface temperature (SST) predict changes in productivity (fledglings per nest) or nutritional stress (corticosterone). We explored the implications of the observed variation in productivity and stress for projected population dynamics based on a previously demonstrated corticosterone−survival relationship. Although productivity was highly variable (0 to 0.9 fledglings nest−1), the relationships between productivity and environmental indices were weak, with local SST providing slightly more explanatory power than PDO or ICI, suggesting that local factors rather than large-scale climate variability may determine variation in productivity. The relationships between stress and environmental indices were stronger than the relationship between productivity and environment. The measured response of stress to environment showed opposite signs between the southern and northern colonies, and typically implied annual mortality rates varying from 11 to 17%. The observed relationships between climate and stress indicate that anticipated warming might bring at least short-term demographic benefits for kittiwakes in the Bering shelf region, while having negative impacts on birds breeding in the Gulf of Alaska and western Aleutians. We predict decline (without immigration) for colonies with the lowest productivity and conclude that climate variability is likely to affect survival of North Pacific kittiwakes on a region-specific basis. Longevity of these birds may not always be sufficient to buffer their populations from low reproductive performance.
منابع مشابه
There is more to climate than the North Atlantic Oscillation: a new perspective from climate dynamics to explain the variability in population growth rates of a long-lived seabird
Citation: Mesquita MdS, Erikstad KE, Sandvik H, Barrett RT, Reiertsen TK, Anker-Nilssen T, Hodges KI and Bader J (2015) There is more to climate than the North Atlantic Oscillation: a new perspective from climate dynamics to explain the variability in population growth rates of a long-lived seabird. Front. Ecol. Evol. 3:43. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2015.00043 There is more to climate than the North At...
متن کاملRange-wide reproductive consequences of ocean climate variability for the seabird Cassin's Auklet.
We examine how ocean climate variability influences the reproductive phenology and demography of the seabird Cassin's Auklet (Ptychoramphus aleuticus) across approximately 2500 km of its breeding range in the oceanographically dynamic California Current System along the west coast of North America. Specifically, we determine the extent to which ocean climate conditions and Cassin's Auklet timin...
متن کاملShifting Effects of Ocean Conditions on Survival and Breeding Probability of a Long-Lived Seabird
With a rapidly changing climate, there is an increasing need to predict how species will respond to changes in the physical environment. One approach is to use historic data to estimate the past influence of environmental variation on important demographic parameters and then use these relationships to project the abundance of a population or species under future climate scenarios. However, as ...
متن کاملSeabirds and climate: knowledge, pitfalls, and opportunities
*Correspondence: Daniel Oro, Institut Mediterrani d’Estudis Avançats, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas Universidad de las Islas Baleares, Miquel Marques 21, Esporles 07190, Mallorca, Spain e-mail: [email protected] As a physical driver of ecosystem functioning, it is not surprising that climate influences seabird demography and population dynamics, generally by affecting food availabi...
متن کاملSpatio-temporal variability in prey harvest and reproductive ecology of a piscivorous seabird, Cerorhinca monocerata, in an upwelling system
Ocean climate affects the life history and demography of top marine predators through changes in local prey availability. In the California Current System, abundance and distribution of mid trophic-level forage fish may be affected by seasonal and interannual variability in upwelling. We tested the hypothesis that upwelling influences forage fish availability and response of a seabird, but that...
متن کامل