How maize monoculture and increasing winter rainfall have brought the hibernating European hamster to the verge of extinction.

Mathilde L Tissier,Mathieu Weitten,Caroline Habold,Jean-Patrice Robin,Yves Handrich,Charlotte Kourkgy,Paul Pevet

doi:10.1038/srep25531

Abstract

Over the last decades, climate change and agricultural intensification have been identified as two major phenomena negatively affecting biodiversity. However, little is known about their effects on the life-history traits of hibernating species living in agro-ecosystems. The European hamster (Cricetus cricetus), once a common rodent on agricultural land, is now on the verge of extinction in France. Despite the implemented measures for its protection, populations are still in sharp decline but the reasons for it remain unclear. To investigate how environmental change has affected this hibernating rodent, we used a data set based on 1468 recordings of hamster body mass at emergence from hibernation from 1937 to 2014. We reveal the adverse effects of increasing winter rainfall and maize monoculture intensification on the body mass of wild hamsters. Given the links that exist between body mass, reproductive success and population dynamics in mammals, these results are of particular importance to understand the decline of this species. In view of the rates of maize monoculture intensification and the predicted increase in winter rainfall, it is of the utmost importance to improve land management in Western Europe to avoid the extinction of this species.

Highlights

Date about the effects of climate and agricultural changes on the life-history traits of hibernating species, nor have any studies investigated how these factors affect fast pace of life mammals living in agro-ecosystems
The European hamster is a species with a fast pace of life, i.e. a short lifespan and a high reproductive rate that should compensate for a high predation rate[27,44]
Despite the theoretical high reproductive rate of these mammals and the strong reinforcement measures applied to protect these populations, the species has shown a decrease of 94% in its French distribution area since 197230

Summary

Introduction

Date about the effects of climate and agricultural changes on the life-history traits of hibernating species, nor have any studies investigated how these factors affect fast pace of life mammals living in agro-ecosystems. It is widely recognized that peripheral populations (i.e. at the edge of the distribution) are genetically more differentiated than central ones, but are facing a higher stochasticity in demographic processes[32] Their conservation deserves high priority and might require specific measures[33,34]. We used data recorded from 1937 to 2014 to investigate how climate change and agricultural modifications could have affected this species, focusing on the impact of these drivers on the body mass of wild individuals at the period of emergence from hibernation. We focused on the impact of climate on body mass since 1937 to disentangle effects of temperature from those of rainfall on the trend observed in body mass

Methods

Results

Conclusion