Warming springs and habitat alteration interact to impact timing of breeding and population dynamics in a migratory bird

Rosemarie Kentie,Mo A Verhoeven,Christiaan Both,Theunis Piersma,Ruth A Howison,A H Jelle Loonstra,Tim Coulson,Jos C E W Hooijmeijer

doi:10.1111/gcb.14406

Abstract

In seasonal environments, increasing spring temperatures lead many taxa to advance the timing of reproduction. Species that do not may suffer lower fitness. We investigated why black-tailed godwits (Limosa limosa limosa), a ground-breeding agricultural grassland shorebird, have not advanced timing of reproduction during the last three decades in the face of climate change and human-induced habitat degradation. We used data from an 11-year field study to parameterize an Integral Projection Model to predict how spring temperature and habitat quality simultaneously influence the timing of reproduction and population dynamics. We found apparent selection for earlier laying, but not a correlation between the laying dates of parents and their offspring. Nevertheless, in warmer springs, laying dates of adults show a stronger positive correlation with laying date in previous springs than in cooler ones, and this leads us to predict a slight advance in the timing of reproduction if spring temperatures continue to increase. We also show that only in landscapes with low agricultural activity, the population can continue to act as a source. This study shows how climate change and declining habitat quality may enhance extinction risk.

Highlights

We modelled the effects of spring temperature and agricultural land use intensity on laying dates while simultaneously examining how laying date affected fitness, and population growth rates
We found support for an interaction between spring temperature and land use intensity: The effect of spring temperature, with warmer springs leading to lower nest survival, was highest on intermediate land use fields and absent on high land use fields (Table 1c)
Previous studies have shown that black‐tailed godwits have not advanced their laying dates since the early 1980s (Kleijn et al, 2010; Schroeder et al, 2012) or possibly even the 1930s (Meltofte et al, 2018), which contrasts most temperate species that advanced their reproductive timing in response to increasing spring temperatures (Crick & Sparks, 1999; Parmesan, 2007)

Summary

| MATERIALS AND METHODS

We constructed an Integral Projection Model (IPM) to investigate how spring temperature and agricultural land use intensity influenced timing of reproduction and population dynamics of black‐tailed godwits. We used Cormack–Jolly–Seber mark–recapture models (White & Burnham, 1999) to test whether apparent adult survival probability was constant or was associated with laying date, Tsum and land use intensity of their breeding location in the year it was captured (N = 649). To establish the relationship between laying date at time t + 1 and at time t within individuals, we used a linear model with a Gaussian error structure with laying dates until 27 April (N = 174, 37, 41 for low, intermediate and high land use intensity). We always included land use intensity as predictor based on previous results (Kentie et al, 2013, 2014), and we tested models with laying date of their birth nest, Tsum, and each interaction between laying date, land use intensity and Tsum as predictors for survival rate of the first age class (N = 2239 hatchlings). Sensitivities of the vital rates were tested for the models with a current temperature scenario, by subsequently changing each parameter by 0.1%

| RESULTS

| DISCUSSION

Findings

CONFLICT OF INTEREST