Adaptive Phenotypic Plasticity in Response to Climate Change in a Wild Bird Population

Charmantier, Anne; McCleery, Robin H.; Cole, L. R.; Perrins, C. M.; Kruuk, Loeske E. B.; Sheldon, Ben C.

doi:10.1126/science.1157174

Cited by 1,115 publications

(1,289 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Conversely, constant wing melanin strongly reduces mean population fitness; and the evolution of wing melanin (without plasticity) causes only modest improvements in mean fitness. These results suggest that plasticity rather than evolution alone can make greater contributions to adaptive responses to climate change in this system (Charmantier et al., 2008; Sgro et al., 2016; Vedder et al., 2013). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How do phenology, plasticity, and evolution determine the fitness consequences of climate change for montane butterflies?

Kingsolver

Buckley

2018

Evolutionary Applications

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Species have responded to climate change via seasonal (phenological) shifts, morphological plasticity, and evolutionary adaptation, but how these responses contribute to changes and variation in population fitness are poorly understood. We assess the interactions and relative importance of these responses for fitness in a montane butterfly, Colias eriphyle, along an elevational gradient. Because environmental temperatures affect developmental rates of each life stage, populations along the gradients differ in phenological timing and the number of generations each year. Our focal phenotype, wing solar absorptivity of adult butterflies, exhibits local adaptation across elevation and responds plastically to developmental temperatures. We integrate climatic data for the past half‐century with microclimate, developmental, biophysical, demographic, and evolutionary models for this system to predict how phenology, plasticity, and evolution contribute to phenotypic and fitness variation along the gradient. We predict that phenological advancements incompletely compensate for climate warming, and also influence morphological plasticity. Climate change is predicted to increase mean population fitness in the first seasonal generation at high elevation, but decrease mean fitness in the summer generations at low elevation. Phenological shifts reduce the interannual variation in directional selection and morphology, but do not have consistent effects on variation in mean fitness. Morphological plasticity and its evolution can substantially increase population fitness and adaptation to climate change at low elevations, but environmental unpredictability limits adaptive plastic and evolutionary responses at high elevations. Phenological shifts also decrease the relative fitness advantages of morphological plasticity and evolution. Our results illustrate how the potential contributions of phenological and morphological plasticity and of evolution to climate change adaptation can vary along environmental gradients and how environmental variability will limit adaptive responses to climate change in montane regions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How do phenology, plasticity, and evolution determine the fitness consequences of climate change for montane butterflies?

Kingsolver

Buckley

2018

Evolutionary Applications

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“…2006; Mizuta 2006; Both and te Marvelde 2007; Charmantier et al. 2008; Magi et al. 2009; Sisask et al.…”

Section: Discussionunclassified

Interspecific variation in the relationship between clutch size, laying date and intensity of urbanization in four species of hole‐nesting birds

Vaugoyeau

Adriaensen

Artemyev

et al. 2016

Ecology and Evolution

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The increase in size of human populations in urban and agricultural areas has resulted in considerable habitat conversion globally. Such anthropogenic areas have specific environmental characteristics, which influence the physiology, life history, and population dynamics of plants and animals. For example, the date of bud burst is advanced in urban compared to nearby natural areas. In some birds, breeding success is determined by synchrony between timing of breeding and peak food abundance. Pertinently, caterpillars are an important food source for the nestlings of many bird species, and their abundance is influenced by environmental factors such as temperature and date of bud burst. Higher temperatures and advanced date of bud burst in urban areas could advance peak caterpillar abundance and thus affect breeding phenology of birds. In order to test whether laying date advance and clutch sizes decrease with the intensity of urbanization, we analyzed the timing of breeding and clutch size in relation to intensity of urbanization as a measure of human impact in 199 nest box plots across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East (i.e., the Western Palearctic) for four species of hole‐nesters: blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), great tits (Parus major), collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis), and pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca). Meanwhile, we estimated the intensity of urbanization as the density of buildings surrounding study plots measured on orthophotographs. For the four study species, the intensity of urbanization was not correlated with laying date. Clutch size in blue and great tits does not seem affected by the intensity of urbanization, while in collared and pied flycatchers it decreased with increasing intensity of urbanization. This is the first large‐scale study showing a species‐specific major correlation between intensity of urbanization and the ecology of breeding. The underlying mechanisms for the relationships between life history and urbanization remain to be determined. We propose that effects of food abundance or quality, temperature, noise, pollution, or disturbance by humans may on their own or in combination affect laying date and/or clutch size.

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“…As previously mentioned, such plasticity often allows for the quickest adaptive phenotypic change in a human-disturbed environment (Van Buskirk 2012), and studies showcasing such plasticity abound. Some birds and anurans, for example, exhibit short-term changes in aspects of acoustic communication in order to overcome anthropogenic background noise (e.g., Gross et al 2010;Cunnington and Fahrig 2010), great tits plastically adjust the timing of reproduction with climate change (Charmantier et al 2008), orangecrowned warblers adjust nesting behavior and parental provisioning in the presence of a novel predator (Peluc et al 2008), etc. While some plastic changes in response to novel environments are adaptive, other plastic changes are clearly maladaptive (e.g., Ghalambor et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental plasticity in vision and behavior may help guppies overcome increased turbidity

et al. 2015

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Adaptive Phenotypic Plasticity in Response to Climate Change in a Wild Bird Population

Cited by 1,115 publications

References 26 publications

How do phenology, plasticity, and evolution determine the fitness consequences of climate change for montane butterflies?

How do phenology, plasticity, and evolution determine the fitness consequences of climate change for montane butterflies?

Interspecific variation in the relationship between clutch size, laying date and intensity of urbanization in four species of hole‐nesting birds

Developmental plasticity in vision and behavior may help guppies overcome increased turbidity

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