Climate change and timing of avian breeding and migration throughout Europe

Both, Christiaan; Marvelde, Luc te

doi:10.3354/cr00716

Cited by 137 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…towards the pole) is consistent with previous studies (Baker 1939;Marchant 1974;Ojanen et al 1979;Marchant and Fullagar 1983;Meijer et al 1999;Both and Marvelde 2007). These results in relation to geographical gradients in temperature suggest that future warming will influence the timing of breeding in Australian birds.…”

Section: Timing Of Breedingsupporting

confidence: 92%

Temporal and spatial variability of breeding in Australian birds and the potential implications of climate change

Gibbs

Chambers

Bennett

2011

Emu - Austral Ornithology

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Abstract. Climate change has profound implications for biodiversity worldwide. To understand its effects on Australia's avifauna, we need to evaluate the effects of annual climatic variability and geographical climate gradients. Here, we use national datasets to examine variation in breeding of 16 species of common and widespread Australian landbirds, in relation to four variables: altitude, latitude, year and the Southern Oscillation Index. Analysis of >30 years of nesting records confirmed that breeding was generally later in colder altitudes and latitudes (geographic variation), but was not consistently related to year or the Southern Oscillation Index (temporal variation). However, power to detect expected temporal effects was low. The timing of breeding became significantly earlier with year only in south-eastern Australia. In contrast, an index of breeding activity (the proportion of atlas records for a species for which breeding was reported) increased with increasing winter values of the Southern Oscillation Index (generally wetter conditions) for all 16 species across Australia. This suggests that annual fluctuations in rainfall can have dramatic and immediate effects on breeding, even for largely sedentary, seasonally breeding species. If, as expected, climate change creates drier conditions over much of Australia, we predict a marked negative effect on bird breeding.

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Section: Timing Of Breedingsupporting

confidence: 92%

Temporal and spatial variability of breeding in Australian birds and the potential implications of climate change

Gibbs

Chambers

Bennett

2011

Emu - Austral Ornithology

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“…Empirical examples of conservative (e.g., cooperative breeding behavior) (31), and diversifying bet-hedging [e.g., maternal adjustment of variance in offspring traits (32) or fimbriae expression in bacteria (33)] also conform to our predictions as they all involve responses to highly unpredictable environmental conditions. Over much longer timescales, where our model predicts adaptive tracking, we see congruence with empirical examples like the slow changes in breeding and migration dates in birds (34) or even the rise of aridadapted African mammals-including hominids-in response to increased aridity in East Africa during the Pliocene and early Pleistocene (35).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Evolutionary tipping points in the capacity to adapt to environmental change

Botero

Weissing

Wright

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

410

523

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In an era of rapid climate change, there is a pressing need to understand how organisms will cope with faster and less predictable variation in environmental conditions. Here we develop a unifying model that predicts evolutionary responses to environmentally driven fluctuating selection and use this theoretical framework to explore the potential consequences of altered environmental cycles. We first show that the parameter space determined by different combinations of predictability and timescale of environmental variation is partitioned into distinct regions where a single mode of response (reversible phenotypic plasticity, irreversible phenotypic plasticity, bet-hedging, or adaptive tracking) has a clear selective advantage over all others. We then demonstrate that, although significant environmental changes within these regions can be accommodated by evolution, most changes that involve transitions between regions result in rapid population collapse and often extinction. Thus, the boundaries between response mode regions in our model correspond to evolutionary tipping points, where even minor changes in environmental parameters can have dramatic and disproportionate consequences on population viability. Finally, we discuss how different life histories and genetic architectures may influence the location of tipping points in parameter space and the likelihood of extinction during such transitions. These insights can help identify and address some of the cryptic threats to natural populations that are likely to result from any natural or human-induced change in environmental conditions. They also demonstrate the potential value of evolutionary thinking in the study of global climate change.fluctuating selection | global change | phenotypic plasticity | bet-hedging | adaptive tracking

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“…Most of these observatories are located in central Europe and southern Fennoscandia, and intercept populations of migratory birds on the way to their breeding grounds (9). This fact prevented us from quantifying change in migration phenology in relation to local climate, because climate during any part of the migratory path could potentially affect change in phenology (44,45). Therefore, we analyzed change in phenology over time, assuming that such change was due to change in climate, as has been done in other studies (8,9,21,35,46,47).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%