Abstract
Models capturing the full effects of weather conditions on animal populations are scarce. Here we decompose yearly temperature and rainfall into mean trends, yearly amplitude of change and residual variation, using daily records. We establish from multi-model inference procedures, based on 1125 life histories (from 1987 to 2008), that European badger (Meles meles) annual mortality and recruitment rates respond to changes in mean trends and to variability in proximate weather components. Variation in mean rainfall was by far the most influential predictor in our analysis. Juvenile survival and recruitment rates were highest at intermediate levels of mean rainfall, whereas low adult survival rates were associated with only the driest, and not the wettest, years. Both juvenile and adult survival rates also exhibited a range of tolerance for residual standard deviation around daily predicted temperature values, beyond which survival rates declined. Life-history parameters, annual routines and adaptive behavioural responses, which define the badgers’ climatic niche, thus appear to be predicated upon a bounded range of climatic conditions, which support optimal survival and recruitment dynamics. That variability in weather conditions is influential, in combination with mean climatic trends, on the vital rates of a generalist, wide ranging and K-selected medium-sized carnivore, has major implications for evolutionary ecology and conservation.
Highlights
The difficulties of determining future climatic conditions present a major issue for both human societies and natural systems [1], prompting ecologists to consider how environmental variability might shape important patterns and processes in nature [2,3,4]
Our ability to predict the consequences of climate change requires that we fully understand how species may, or may not, be able to adapt to changing conditions over a range of temporal and spatial scales [5]
By examining the influence of weather variability on survival and recruitment rates, our study contributes to a growing understanding of how mammals in general, and badgers in particular, respond to climatic conditions through looking at stressors of their climatic niche
Summary
The difficulties of determining future climatic conditions present a major issue for both human societies and natural systems [1], prompting ecologists to consider how environmental variability might shape important patterns and processes in nature [2,3,4]. In the face of environmental change, such as more frequent episodes of extreme weather, species will attempt to adapt behaviourally, or evolve new physiological tolerances to cope with altered conditions, while vagile species may move spatially to maintain existing physiological associations with the particular climates that define each species’ climatic niche [12,13]. A major challenge is to better understand how population demographic parameters interact with weather patterns, in order to establish how species may respond to changes in climate averages [18] as well as changes in climate variability [20,25]
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