Life-history predicts global population responses to the weather in the terrestrial mammals

Abstract

With the looming threat of abrupt ecological disruption due to a changing climate, predicting which species are most vulnerable to environmental change is critical. The life-history of a species is a promising candidate for explaining differences in climate-change responses, but we now need data linking population change, weather and life-history to explore these predictions. Here, we use long-term abundance records from 157 species of terrestrial mammals to investigate the link between weather and annual population growth rates. Overall, we found no consistent effect of temperature or precipitation anomalies on annual population growth rates, but there was variability in weather responses for populations within a species. Crucially, however, long-lived mammals with smaller litter sizes had responses with a reduced absolute magnitude compared to their shorter-living counterparts with larger litters. These results highlight the role of species-level life-history in driving responses to the environment.

Current perspectives and future directions in animal life history evolution

“…The impact of variable environments on life histories is a key topic in life history evolution and population dynamics (Sutherland et al, 2013). The reason for this is, in addition to being interesting, global climate change is predicted to change environment variability (a key driver of variance in life history processes (Jackson et al, 2022)) across the globeposing an imminent threat to biodiversity (Bathiany et al, 2018;Drake, 2005;Masson-Delmotte et al, 2021;Vasseur et al, 2014).…”