Earlier breeding, lower success: does the spatial scale of climatic conditions matter in a migratory passerine bird?

Ecology and Evolution

Annegret Grimm⁴  Brigitte M. Weiß⁴  Lars Kulik⁴  Jean-Baptiste Mihoub²  Roger Mundry³  Ulrich Köppen¹  Tomas Brueckmann⁵  Ruth Thomsen⁴ 

[1] Beringungszentrale Hiddensee, Greifswald, Germany;Department of Conservation Biology, UFZ-Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany;Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany;Behavioral Ecology Research Group, Institute of Biology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany;Grüne LIGA Kohrener Land, Kohren-Sahlis, Germany

关键词: Barn swallow;    breeding success;    climate change;    Hirundo rustica;    local temperature;    NAO;    North Atlantic Oscillation;    phenology;    scale sensitivity;   

DOI  :  10.1002/ece3.1824

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Following over 20 years of research on the climatic effects on biodiversity we now have strong evidence that climate change affects phenology, fitness, and distribution ranges of different taxa, including birds. Bird phenology likely responds to changes in local weather. It is also affected by climatic year-to-year variations on larger scales. Although such scale-related effects are common in ecology, most studies analyzing the effects of climate change were accomplished using climatic information on a single spatial scale. In this study, we aimed at determining the scale-dependent sensitivity of breeding phenology and success to climate change in a migratory passerine bird, the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica). For both annual broods, we investigated effects of local weather (local scale) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO, large scale) on the timing of breeding and breeding success. Consistent with previous studies in migratory birds we found that barn swallows in Eastern Germany bred progressively earlier. At the same time, they showed reduced breeding success over time in response to recent climatic changes. Responses to climatic variation were observed on both local and large climatic scales, but they differed with respect to the ecological process considered. Specifically, we found that the timing of breeding was primarily influenced by large-scale NAO variations and to a lesser extent by local weather on the breeding grounds. Conversely, climatic conditions on the local scale affected breeding success, exclusively. The observed decrease in breeding success over years is likely a consequence of scale-related mismatches between climatic conditions during different breeding phases. This provides further evidence that a species' response of earlier breeding may not be enough to cope with climate change. Our results emphasize the importance of considering the response of ecological processes along different climatic scales in order to better understand the complexity of climate change effects on biodiversity.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.