Feeling the heat: Australian landbirds and climate change

McKechnie, Andrew E.; Hockey, Philip A. R.; Wolf, Blair O.

doi:10.1071/muv112n2_ed

Cited by 125 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…This tolerance of what to us are extreme conditions can be exacerbated by further extreme events of even higher environmental temperatures. Animals may already be near the upper edge of their thermal tolerance range due to limited mechanisms of cooling, as opposed to the wide variety of mechanisms by which physiology may be adapted to low temperatures [33]. Furthermore, behavioural mechanisms such as facultative migrations may be useless when temperature extremes are widespread forcing birds to endure the event.…”

Section: Case Studies: Extreme Heatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, behavioural mechanisms such as facultative migrations may be useless when temperature extremes are widespread forcing birds to endure the event. As with humans [35], fatalities during extreme heat events have been recorded in birds both in Australia and North America (reviewed in [15,33,36]). The single largest high temperature event on record occurred in 1932 when a heatwave struck much of southern Australia, with air temperatures reaching 498C.…”

Section: Case Studies: Extreme Heatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many animals and plants are adapted to seasonal heat especially by using micro-habitats (for reviews see [15,32,33], see also Gardner et al [34], for longer term responses). This tolerance of what to us are extreme conditions can be exacerbated by further extreme events of even higher environmental temperatures.…”

Section: Case Studies: Extreme Heatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, a multiday heatwave with temperatures in excess of 458C led to the deaths of thousands of small birds in Western Australia (approx. 500 km north of Perth; reviewed in [33]). These heat-related mass mortality events highlight the example of climatological extremes and biological extremes matching.…”

Section: Case Studies: Extreme Heatmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

How birds cope physiologically and behaviourally with extreme climatic events

Wingfield

Pérez

Krause

et al. 2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

103

114

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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'.

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Section: Case Studies: Extreme Heatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Studies: Extreme Heatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Studies: Extreme Heatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Studies: Extreme Heatmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

How birds cope physiologically and behaviourally with extreme climatic events

Wingfield

Pérez

Krause

et al. 2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

103

114

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Exposure to severe heatwaves with temperatures above critical thresholds can have dramatic immediate impacts on wild populations, leading to mass mortalities and major population crashes via fatal hyperthermia [1,2]. In addition, there is growing evidence that pervasive effects of increasing exposure to high temperatures may also have implications for individual phenotypes and hence for fitness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of extreme weather on two sympatric Australian passerine bird species

Gardner

Rowley

Rebeira³

et al. 2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 14 to a theme issue 'Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events'. Despite abundant evidence that natural populations are responding to climate change, there are few demonstrations of how extreme climatic events (ECEs) affect fitness. Climate warming increases adverse effects of exposure to high temperatures, but also reduces exposure to cold ECEs. Here, we investigate variation in survival associated with severity of summer and winter conditions, and whether survival is better predicted by ECEs than mean temperatures using data from two coexisting bird species monitored over 37 years in southwestern Australia, red-winged fairy-wrens, Malurus elegans and white-browed scrubwrens, Sericornis frontalis. Changes in survival were associated with temperature extremes more strongly than average temperatures. In scrubwrens, winter ECEs were associated with survival within the same season. In both species, survival was associated with body size, and there was evidence that size-dependent mortality was mediated by carry-over effects of climate in the previous season. For fairy-wrens, mean body size declined over time but this could not be explained by size-dependent mortality as the effects of body size on survival were consistently positive. Our study demonstrates how ECEs can have individual-level effects on survival that are not reflected in long-term morphological change, and the same climatic conditions can affect similar-sized, coexisting species in different ways.This article is part of the themed issue 'Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events'.

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Using a historic drought and high‐heat event to validate thermal exposure predictions for ground‐dwelling birds

Carroll

Davis

Elmore

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Deviations from typical environmental conditions can provide insight into how organisms may respond to future weather extremes predicted by climate modeling. During an episodic and multimonth heat wave event (i.e., ambient temperature up to 43.4°C), we studied the thermal ecology of a ground‐dwelling bird species in Western Oklahoma, USA. Specifically, we measured black bulb temperature (T bb) and vegetation parameters at northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus; hereafter bobwhite) adult and brood locations as well as at stratified random points in the study area. On the hottest days (i.e., ≥39°C), adults and broods obtained thermal refuge using tall woody cover that remained on average up to 16.51°C cooler than random sites on the landscape which reached >57°C. We also found that refuge sites used by bobwhites moderated thermal conditions by more than twofold compared to stratified random sites on the landscape but that T bb commonly exceeded thermal stress thresholds for bobwhites (39°C) for several hours of the day within thermal refuges. The serendipitous high heat conditions captured in our study represent extreme heat for our study region as well as thermal stress for our study species, and subsequently allowed us to assess ground‐dwelling bird responses to temperatures that are predicted to become more common in the future. Our findings confirm the critical importance of tall woody cover for moderating temperatures and functioning as important islands of thermal refuge for ground‐dwelling birds, especially during extreme heat. However, the potential for extreme heat loads within thermal refuges that we observed (albeit much less extreme than the landscape) indicates that the functionality of tall woody cover to mitigate heat extremes may be increasingly limited in the future, thereby reinforcing predictions that climate change represents a clear and present danger for these species.

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Feeling the heat: Australian landbirds and climate change

Cited by 125 publications

References 28 publications

How birds cope physiologically and behaviourally with extreme climatic events

How birds cope physiologically and behaviourally with extreme climatic events

Effects of extreme weather on two sympatric Australian passerine bird species

Using a historic drought and high‐heat event to validate thermal exposure predictions for ground‐dwelling birds

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