Abstract
As a physical driver of ecosystem functioning, it is not surprising that climate influences seabird demography and population dynamics, generally by affecting food availability. However, if we zoom in ecologically, seabirds are in fact very heterogeneous, ranging in size from very small to very large species (with a difference of more than two orders of magnitude in body weight), from planktivorous forms to predators of large fish and squid, from benthic to pelagic, from species with small foraging ranges to species feeding throughout the whole circumpolar region, and from resident species (at a spatial mesoscale) to trans-equatorial migrating seabirds that travel large distances across several oceanographic systems. Due to this high variability and the difficulty in obtaining direct reliable estimates of long-term food availability, global climatic indices have been extensively used in studying seabird demography and population dynamics. However, the use made by researchers of these indices has certain conceptual and methodological pitfalls, which I shall address in this review. Other factors, such as anthropogenic impacts (including oil-spills and interaction with fisheries), may further alter or confound the association between climate and seabird demography. These pitfalls and environmental noise, together with the inability to incorporate resilience, may bias our predictions regarding the future impact of global warming on seabirds, many of which have vulnerable populations.
Highlights
Due to this high variability and the difficulty in obtaining direct reliable estimates of long-term food availability, global climatic indices have been extensively used in studying seabird demography and population dynamics
Even though some of those items dealt with other marine organisms or were focused on some related issues, that result represents a large number of scientific contributions on the topic of how climate may influence seabird ecology
The influence of climate on marine organisms has been extensively studied in seabirds because, compared to most other species, their demography and population dynamics can be monitored in breeding colonies
Summary
Even for the same species in different studies, results are not always similar (see Table 1), suggesting differences among populations (Tavecchia et al, 2008) or raising doubts about the suitability of selected climate indexes, the temporal window analyzed or the power of each data set to detect associations between climate and the seabird parameter of interest, especially when these associations are not statistically significant (Jenouvrier, 2013).
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