Abstract
BackgroundHigher temperatures and increased environmental variability under climate change could jeopardize the persistence of species. Organisms that rely on short windows of rainfall to complete their life-cycles, like desert annual plants or temporary pool animals, may be particularly at risk. Although some could tolerate environmental changes by building-up banks of propagules (seeds or eggs) that buffer against catastrophes, climate change will threaten this resilience mechanism if higher temperatures reduce propagule survival. Using a crustacean model species from temporary waters, we quantified experimentally the survival and dormancy of propagules under anticipated climate change and used these demographic parameters to simulate long term population dynamics.ResultsBy exposing propagules to present-day and projected daily temperature cycles in an 8 month laboratory experiment, we showed how increased temperatures reduce survival rates in the propagule bank. Integrating these reduced survival rates into population models demonstrated the inability of the bank to maintain populations; thereby exacerbating extinction risk caused by shortened growing seasons.ConclusionsOverall, our study demonstrates that climate change could threaten the persistence of populations by both reducing habitat suitability and eroding life-history strategies that support demographic resilience.
Highlights
Higher temperatures and increased environmental variability under climate change could jeopardize the persistence of species
Organisms that depend strongly on short windows of rainfall and suitable temperatures to complete their life cycles may be especially vulnerable to climate change
According to the generalized linear mixed models (GLMM), egg survival rates differed between the temperature regime treatments (χ2 = 43.186, P < 0.001), survival rates of young eggs were significantly higher than those of old eggs (χ2 = 28.570, P < 0.001) and survival decreased significantly with increasing incubation time (χ2 = 11.795, P < 0.001) (Fig. 1a, b; Additional file 4)
Summary
Higher temperatures and increased environmental variability under climate change could jeopardize the persistence of species. Organisms that depend strongly on short windows of rainfall and suitable temperatures to complete their life cycles may be especially vulnerable to climate change They will be exposed to shortened growing seasons, which impose more stringent time constraints on maturation and reproduction, reduce population growth rates and increase extinction risks [5,6,7]. The propagule bank spreads recruitment over multiple potential growing seasons through long term dormancy and delayed development, thereby buffering populations against unfavorable growing seasons and demographic catastrophes [10, 11] Both empirical and modelling studies demonstrate that propagule banks are crucial for the resilience of populations, especially when growing seasons are often unsuitable for successful reproduction [7, 9, 12]
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