Circumpolar dynamics of a marine top‐predator track ocean warming rates

Abstract

Global warming is a nonlinear process, and temperature may increase in a stepwise manner. Periods of abrupt warming can trigger persistent changes in the state of ecosystems, also called regime shifts. The responses of organisms to abrupt warming and associated regime shifts can be unlike responses to periods of slow or moderate change. Understanding of nonlinearity in the biological responses to climate warming is needed to assess the consequences of ongoing climate change. Here, we demonstrate that the population dynamics of a long-lived, wide-ranging marine predator are associated with changes in the rate of ocean warming. Data from 556 colonies of black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla distributed throughout its breeding range revealed that an abrupt warming of sea-surface temperature in the 1990s coincided with steep kittiwake population decline. Periods of moderate warming in sea temperatures did not seem to affect kittiwake dynamics. The rapid warming observed in the 1990s may have driven large-scale, circumpolar marine ecosystem shifts that strongly affected kittiwakes through bottom-up effects. Our study sheds light on the nonlinear response of a circumpolar seabird to large-scale changes in oceanographic conditions and indicates that marine top predators may be more sensitive to the rate of ocean warming rather than to warming itself.

Wintering seabirds in south-west Greenland, 2017

“…The fact that the black-legged kittiwake was completely missing during the 2017 survey also coincides with a general decline among breeding populations in the North Atlantic (Descamps et al 2017). However, as with the alcids and the other gulls, only a small portion of the total winter range was covered during both surveys, so the difference may be due to geographical shifts within the overall wintering area.…”

“…piscivorous seabird species have declined in the eastern North Atlantic has accumulated (Frederiksen 2010;Ganter & Gaston 2013;Kuletz et al 2017). The declines appear to be linked to wide-ranging climate and ecosystem changes in the North Atlantic (Irons et al 2008;Descamps et al 2013;Frederiksen et al 2013;Descamps et al 2017). However, among planktonic and benthic feeders, some species are seemingly doing well and local changes are sometimes opposite to the general trend (Frederiksen 2017).…”

Varied breeding responses of seabirds to a regime shift in prey base in the Gulf of Maine

“…To account for potential environmental effects on prey availability, we included sea surface temperature (SST) from island measurements recorded daily at noon in May, June, and July. Prey quality and availability in May will affect females forming eggs (Perrins 1970), and summer temperatures can affect breeding success, through prey availability for chicks (Carroll et al 2015, Descamps et al 2017).…”

Spatial synchrony of breeding success in the blacklegged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla reflects the spatial dynamics of its sandeel prey

“…One species in which spatial synchrony has been investigated is the black-legged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla (hereafter 'kittiwake'), a colonial, pelagic seabird species that has recently shown such steep declines that it was globally red listed (BirdLife International 2018). Over the scale of its full distribution across the Northern Hemisphere, synchrony in the fluctuations of colony sizes has generally been nonexistent or very low, apart from a synchronised decline during a period of rapid ocean warming (Descamps et al 2017). Similarly, a study looking at smaller scale synchrony, using colonies along the coast of Norway, found no evidence that colony sizes fluctuated in unison (Sandvik et al 2014).…”