Abstract
A global trend of a warming climate may seriously affect species dependent on sea ice. We investigated the impact of climate on the Baltic ringed seals (Phoca hispida botnica), using historical and future climatological time series. Availability of suitable breeding ice is known to affect pup survival. We used detailed information on how winter temperatures affect the extent of breeding ice and a climatological model (RCA3) to project the expected effects on the Baltic ringed seal population. The population comprises of three sub-populations, and our simulations suggest that all of them will experience severely hampered growth rates during the coming 90 years. The projected 30 730 seals at the end of the twenty-first century constitutes only 16 % of the historical population size, and thus reduced ice cover alone will severely limit their growth rate. This adds burden to a species already haunted by other anthropogenic impacts.
Highlights
Global warming is causing major perturbations in ecosystems with extensive seasonal sea ice (Grebmeier et al 2006)
While Arctic and Antarctic seal species have the possibility to migrate to higher latitudes, landlocked and semi-landlocked seal species such as the Baltic ringed seal (Phoca hispida botnica), the Caspian seal (P. caspica), the Baikal seal (P. sibirica), the Ladoga seal (P. hispida ladogensis), and the Saimaa seal (P. hispida saimensis) do not have this option
Running the model with the estimated extents of breeding ice over the past 350 years we find that a territory size of 1.0 km2 permits a population size of about 200 000 ringed seals (Fig. 4), which is in the same order of magnitude as estimated from bounty statistics (Harding and Harkonen 1999)
Summary
Global warming is causing major perturbations in ecosystems with extensive seasonal sea ice (Grebmeier et al 2006). While Arctic and Antarctic seal species have the possibility to migrate to higher latitudes, landlocked and semi-landlocked seal species such as the Baltic ringed seal (Phoca hispida botnica), the Caspian seal (P. caspica), the Baikal seal (P. sibirica), the Ladoga seal (P. hispida ladogensis), and the Saimaa seal (P. hispida saimensis) do not have this option. For these species reduced breeding habitats may pose an important density-dependent regulatory mechanism
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