Impacts of climate variation and potential effects of climate change on South American seabirds – a review

Abstract

The coastal and oceanic waters around the South American coasts provide rich foraging grounds for breeding and wintering seabirds, but there is growing concern that climate change will provide additional pressures to the seabirds around South America. As in many other coastal ecosystems, seabirds around South America are already faced with threats to their breeding habitats such as human disturbance and introduced predators, and threats at sea such as persistent pollutants and pesticides and direct mortality risks due to fisheries and oil spills. The sensitivity of South American marine ecosystems to ocean climate anomalies is well known from the dramatic population collapses caused by El Niñ o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. However, longer-term climate change effects have been explored less often and few long-term data sets exist for South American seabirds. Seven Large Marine Ecosystems (LME) border South America. While all LMEs experienced warming during the last 50 years, their climate dynamics have differed in recent decades. Climate models suggest that potential climate change effects may be important, especially due to changes in ENSO intensity and frequency and associated changes in the ocean climate of Atlantic and Pacific marine ecosystems. In this review, we found that the best studied seabird communities are those of the Patagonian Shelf and the Humboldt Current, but overall, our knowledge on climate effects on South American seabirds is scarce.

When Bergmann's rule fails: evidences of environmental selection pressures shaping phenotypic diversification in a widespread seabird

“…environmental variables) and it could be understood as dispersal cost, which is determined by the degree of adaptive diversification generated from ecological differences between colonies (Weatherhead and Forbes 1994). In this context, environmental variables with oceanographic parameters (both large and small spatial scales) should be a primer in explaining phenotypic diversity in the marine realm, since it also enables monitoring climate change effects on marine organisms considering intraspecific diversity (Quillfeldt and Masello 2013). Tropical marine environments tend to be stable throughout the year, but an increase in sea surface temperature during the last 100 yr has been observed in tropical oceans (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999).…”

Seabirds and climate: knowledge, pitfalls, and opportunities

“…Given that previous papers have recently reviewed thoroughly the state-of-the-art knowledge on seabirds and climate (Schreiber, 2002;Barbraud et al, 2012;Sydeman et al, 2012;Jenouvrier, 2013;Quillfeldt and Masello, 2013), here I shall concentrate on more conceptual issues, knowledge gaps and pitfalls typical of the studies dealing with how climate influences the ecology of seabirds.…”

“…Nevertheless, it was not until the end of the 90s that the literature on climate and seabirds exponentially increased (Montevecchi and Myers, 1997;Guinet et al, 1998;Lyver et al, 1999) (see Figure 1) and that the first paper relating climate and adult survival of a seabird appeared using reliable and robust quantitative methods (Barbraud et al, 2000). That exponential phase was likely the result of the increasing interest of the scientific community about climate change in the ecological literature during those years, together with the appearance of new statistical tools and the improvement of computational power (Figure 1) (Green et al, 2005).Given that previous papers have recently reviewed thoroughly the state-of-the-art knowledge on seabirds and climate (Schreiber, 2002;Barbraud et al, 2012;Sydeman et al, 2012;Jenouvrier, 2013;Quillfeldt and Masello, 2013), here I shall concentrate on more conceptual issues, knowledge gaps and pitfalls typical of the studies dealing with how climate influences the ecology of seabirds. …”

Using non-systematic surveys to investigate effects of regional climate variability on Australasian gannets in the Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand

“…Previous studies on seabirds indicate that they adapt variably to climate change -the effects are often dictated by intrinsic life history factors and indirectly, through increases or decreases in SST and other climatological factors (Chambers et al, 2012(Chambers et al, , 2013Quillfeldt and Masello, 2013). Although seabird responses to environmental change are difficult to predict, there are certain consistent patterns (e.g.…”