Abstract
Climate and landscape change are drivers of species range shifts and biodiversity loss; understanding how they facilitate and sustain invasions has been empirically challenging. Winter severity is decreasing with climate change and is a predicted mechanism of contemporary and future range shifts. For example, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) expansion is a continental phenomenon across the Nearctic with ecological consequences for entire biotic communities. We capitalized on recent temporal variation in winter severity to examine spatial and temporal dynamics of invasive deer distribution in the Nearctic boreal forest. We hypothesized deer distribution would decrease in severe winters reflecting historical climate constraints, and remain more static in moderate winters reflecting recent climate. Further, we predicted that regardless of winter severity, deer distribution would persist and be best explained by early seral forage subsidies from extensive landscape change via resource extraction. We applied dynamic occupancy models in time, and species distribution models in space, to data from 62 camera traps sampled over 3 years in northeastern Alberta, Canada. Deer distribution shrank more markedly in severe winters but rebounded each spring regardless of winter severity. Deer distribution was best explained by anthropogenic landscape features assumed to provide early seral vegetation subsidy, accounting for natural landcover. We conclude that deer dynamics in the northern boreal forest are influenced both by landscape change across space and winter severity through time, the latter expected to further decrease with climate change. We contend that the combined influence of these two drivers is likely pervasive for many species, with changing resources offsetting or augmenting physiological limitations.
Highlights
Climate and landscape change are drivers of species range shifts and biodiversity loss; understanding how they facilitate and sustain invasions has been empirically challenging
We examined the roles of landscape change – defined here as anthropogenic landscape features – and variable winter severity in distribution dynamics of invasive white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus, hereafter “deer”) in the western Canadian boreal forest
Mild winters typical of contemporary weather stemming from climate change support persistence of white-tailed deer in Nearctic boreal forests, but even severe winters do not suppress landscape-scale distribution of this invasive ungulate into spring
Summary
Climate and landscape change are drivers of species range shifts and biodiversity loss; understanding how they facilitate and sustain invasions has been empirically challenging. We capitalized on recent temporal variation in winter severity to examine spatial and temporal dynamics of invasive deer distribution in the Nearctic boreal forest. We predicted that regardless of winter severity, deer distribution would persist and be best explained by early seral forage subsidies from extensive landscape change via resource extraction. We conclude that deer dynamics in the northern boreal forest are influenced both by landscape change across space and winter severity through time, the latter expected to further decrease with climate change. We examined the roles of landscape change – defined here as anthropogenic landscape features – and variable winter severity in distribution dynamics of invasive white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus, hereafter “deer”) in the western Canadian boreal forest. At the same time the landscape footprint of forest harvesting, energy exploration and extraction, and transportation infrastructure has generated a spatially extensive array of early seral vegetation, smaller in patch size but much more widely dispersed, and greater in overall area, than natural disturbance regimes[31,32]
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