Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events: challenges and directions

102

114

One contribution of 14 to a theme issue 'Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events'. As global climate change progresses, the occurrence of potentially disruptive climatic events such as storms are increasing in frequency, duration and intensity resulting in higher mortality and reduced reproductive success. What constitutes an extreme climatic event? First we point out that extreme climatic events in biological contexts can occur in any environment. Focusing on field and laboratory data on wild birds we propose a mechanistic approach to defining and investigating what extreme climatic events are and how animals cope with them at physiological and behavioural levels. The life cycle of birds is made up of life-history stages such as migration, breeding and moult that evolved to match a range of environmental conditions an individual might expect during the year. When environmental conditions deteriorate and deviate from the expected range then the individual must trigger coping mechanisms (emergency life-history stage) that will disrupt the temporal progression of life-history stages, but enhance survival. Using the framework of allostasis, we argue that an extreme climatic event in biological contexts can be defined as when the cumulative resources available to an individual are exceeded by the sum of its energetic costs-a state called allostatic overload. This allostatic overload triggers the emergency life-history stage that temporarily allows the individual to cease regular activities in an attempt to survive extreme conditions. We propose that glucocorticoid hormones play a major role in orchestrating coping mechanisms and are critical for enduring extreme climatic events.This article is part of the themed issue 'Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events'.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How birds cope physiologically and behaviourally with extreme climatic events

Wingfield

Pérez

Krause

et al. 2017

102

114

“…Indeed, these varying definitions, as well as the multiple different research approaches historically employed (e.g. observational versus experimental), underscore the challenges in attaining a general understanding of the ecological and evolutionary consequences of climate extremes [26]. For our purposes, we consider experimental, observational and opportunistic studies that assessed plant responses to climatically extreme conditions irrespective of the magnitude of the ecological responses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, our approach was motivated towards improving an understanding of the ecological mechanisms that may underlie the variability in ecosystem resistance and resilience to periods of climatically extreme conditions. Thus for this review, we employ the climatological definition outlined in the 2016 Attribution of extreme weather events in the context of climate change [29] (table 1 from the Introduction and synthesis of this issue [26]). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating plant ecological responses to climate extremes from individual to ecosystem levels

Felton

Smith

2017

100

Climate extremes will elicit responses from the individual to the ecosystem level. However, only recently have ecologists begun to synthetically assess responses to climate extremes across multiple levels of ecological organization. We review the literature to examine how plant responses vary and interact across levels of organization, focusing on how individual, population and community responses may inform ecosystem-level responses in herbaceous and forest plant communities. We report a high degree of variability at the individual level, and a consequential inconsistency in the translation of individual or population responses to directional changes in community- or ecosystem-level processes. The scaling of individual or population responses to community or ecosystem responses is often predicated upon the functional identity of the species in the community, in particular, the dominant species. Furthermore, the reported stability in plant community composition and functioning with respect to extremes is often driven by processes that operate at the community level, such as species niche partitioning and compensatory responses during or after the event. Future research efforts would benefit from assessing ecological responses across multiple levels of organization, as this will provide both a holistic and mechanistic understanding of ecosystem responses to increasing climatic variability. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events’.

“…Thus, we believe that extreme environmental conditions for black-browed albatross more likely consist of persistent warmer SST over the entire breeding season and over a wide spatial sector, whereby their average value is extreme (i.e. a compound ECE, see [7]). …”

Section: (D) Methodological Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of extreme sea surface temperature events on the demography of an age-structured albatross population

Pardo

Jenouvrier

Weimerskirch

et al. 2017

Self Cite

One contribution of 14 to a theme issue 'Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events'. Climate changes include concurrent changes in environmental mean, variance and extremes, and it is challenging to understand their respective impact on wild populations, especially when contrasted age-dependent responses to climate occur. We assessed how changes in mean and standard deviation of sea surface temperature (SST), frequency and magnitude of warm SST extreme climatic events (ECE) influenced the stochastic population growth rate log(l s ) and age structure of a black-browed albatross population. For changes in SST around historical levels observed since 1982, changes in standard deviation had a larger (threefold) and negative impact on log(l s ) compared to changes in mean. By contrast, the mean had a positive impact on log(l s ). The historical SST mean was lower than the optimal SST value for which log(l s ) was maximized. Thus, a larger environmental mean increased the occurrence of SST close to this optimum that buffered the negative effect of ECE. This 'climate safety margin' (i.e. difference between optimal and historical climatic conditions) and the specific shape of the population growth rate response to climate for a species determine how ECE affect the population. For a wider range in SST, both the mean and standard deviation had negative impact on log(l s ), with changes in the mean having a greater effect than the standard deviation. Furthermore, around SST historical levels increases in either mean or standard deviation of the SST distribution led to a younger population, with potentially important conservation implications for black-browed albatrosses.This article is part of the themed issue 'Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events'.