The influence of climate variability on demographic rates of avian Afro-palearctic migrants

Tomáš Telenský,Petr Klvaňa,Miroslav Jelínek,Jaroslav Cepák,Jiří Reif

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-74658-w

Abstract

Climate is an important driver of changes in animal population size, but its effect on the underlying demographic rates remains insufficiently understood. This is particularly true for avian long-distance migrants which are exposed to different climatic factors at different phases of their annual cycle. To fill this knowledge gap, we used data collected by a national-wide bird ringing scheme for eight migratory species wintering in sub-Saharan Africa and investigated the impact of climate variability on their breeding productivity and adult survival. While temperature at the breeding grounds could relate to the breeding productivity either positively (higher food availability in warmer springs) or negatively (food scarcity in warmer springs due to trophic mismatch), water availability at the non-breeding should limit the adult survival and the breeding productivity. Consistent with the prediction of the trophic mismatch hypothesis, we found that warmer springs at the breeding grounds were linked with lower breeding productivity, explaining 29% of temporal variance across all species. Higher water availability at the sub-Saharan non-breeding grounds was related to higher adult survival (18% temporal variance explained) but did not carry-over to breeding productivity. Our results show that climate variability at both breeding and non-breeding grounds shapes different demographic rates of long-distance migrants.

Highlights

Climate is an important driver of changes in animal population size, but its effect on the underlying demographic rates remains insufficiently understood
Simultaneous assessments of climatic factors acting on demographic rates in different phases of migrants’ annual cycle are needed[7]
We focused on two important demographic rates reflecting the influence of climatic factors at the breeding and the non-breeding grounds—breeding productivity and adult survival, in Afro-palearctic migratory birds

Summary

Introduction

Climate is an important driver of changes in animal population size, but its effect on the underlying demographic rates remains insufficiently understood This is true for avian long-distance migrants which are exposed to different climatic factors at different phases of their annual cycle. Despite the widespread influence of climatic conditions on animal p opulations[3], their impacts on species’ demographic rates are still insufficiently known in many organisms This is true for long-distance migratory birds. The second scenario predicts the opposite pattern, i.e. a negative relationship between spring temperature and breeding productivity of long-distance migrants Under this scenario, higher spring temperature results in altered interspecific interactions with the most influential trophic mismatch hypothesis in predator–prey interaction[14]. One could expect that such variables describing the ecosystem responses will have stronger relationships to the breeding productivity than temperature per se

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Conclusion