Minimal shift of eastern wild turkey nesting phenology associated with projected climate change

Boone, Wesley W.; Moorman, Christopher E.; Terando, Adam; Moscicki, David J.; Collier, Bret A.; Chamberlain, Michael J.; Pacifici, Krishna

doi:10.1016/j.ecochg.2023.100075

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Temperatures are expected to increase under future climate change projections (Almazroui et al 2021). If eastern wild turkey reproductive timing remains static as was reported by Boone et al (2023), nest survival could increase as temperatures increase.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Robust assessment of associations between weather and eastern wild turkey nest success

Boone,

Moorman,

Moscicki

et al. 2023

J Wildl Manag

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Temperature and precipitation have been identified as factors that potentially influence eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) reproduction, but robust analyses testing the relationship between weather parameters and turkey nest success are lacking. Therefore, we assessed how weather influenced turkey daily nest survival using 8 years of data collected from 715 nests across the southeastern United States. We also conducted exploratory analyses investigating if weather conditions during or prior to nesting best predicted nest success. We then assessed the possible implications of climate change through 2041–2060 for future eastern wild turkey daily nest survival and nest success for variables determined significant in analyses. During incubation, positive anomalies of minimum daily temperature were associated with greater daily nest survival. Precipitation during nesting was not a good predictor of daily nest survival. Exploratory analyses unexpectedly indicated that weather conditions in January prior to incubation were more important to nest success than weather conditions during incubation. In January, negative anomalies of minimum temperature and greater average daily precipitation were associated with greater nest success. Projections of future nest success or daily nest survival based on these relationships with the predictive covariates, and informed by climate models, suggest that nest success may increase as January precipitation increases and that daily nest survival may increase as temperature during incubation increases. These positive associations could be offset by a negative association between nest success and the expected increases in January minimum average temperature. Additional research is needed to investigate causes of these relationships and assess the implications of climate change for eastern wild turkey poult survival.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Robust assessment of associations between weather and eastern wild turkey nest success

Boone,

Moorman,

Moscicki

et al. 2023

J Wildl Manag

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the second year of the season delay (2022), median IID in delayed counties was 28 April, which was the latest date for median IID in those counties across all 6 years (Table 4 ). Annual variation in nest incubation initiation could be influenced by annual variability in spring phenology or rainfall prior to nest initiation (Boone et al., 2023 ). The age of the hen was the only reliable predictor of nest incubation initiation date, which is consistent with the literature indicating adult hens initiate incubation earlier than juveniles (Londe et al., 2023 ; Norman et al., 2001 ; Quehl, 2023 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing wild turkey productivity before and after a 14‐day delay in the start date of the spring hunting season in Tennessee

Quehl,

Phillips,

Johnson

et al. 2024

Ecology and Evolution

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Ten state wildlife management agencies in the United States, including six within the Southeast, have delayed their spring wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) hunting seasons since 2017 by five or more days to address concerns related to the potential effects of hunting on wild turkey seasonal productivity. One hypothesis posits that if the spring hunting season is too early, there may be insufficient time for males to breed hens before being harvested, thus leading to reduced seasonal productivity. We conducted an experiment to determine whether delaying the wild turkey hunting season by 2 weeks in south‐middle Tennessee would affect various reproductive rates. In 2021 and 2022, the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission experimentally delayed the spring hunting season to open 14 days later than the traditional date (the Saturday closest to 1 April) in Giles, Lawrence, and Wayne counties. We monitored reproductive rates from 2017 to 2022 in these three counties as well as two adjacent counties, Bedford and Maury, that were not delayed. We used a Before‐After‐Control‐Impact design to analyze the proportion of hens nesting, clutch size, hatchability, nest success, poult survival and hen survival with linear mixed‐effect models and AIC model selection to detect relationships between the 14‐day delay and reproductive parameters. We detected no relationship (p > .05) between the 14‐day delay and any individual reproductive parameter. In addition, recruitment (hen poults per hen that survived until the next breeding season) was very low (<0.5) and did not increase because of the 14‐day delay. The traditional Tennessee start date had been in place since 1986 while the turkey harvest increased markedly until about 2006 and more recently stabilized. Our data indicate that moving the start of the hunting season from a period just prior to peak nest initiation to 2 weeks later, to coincide with a period just prior to peak nest incubation initiation, resulted in no change to productivity or populations in wild turkey flocks in south‐middle Tennessee.

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Widespread arboreal foraging behavior in ground-dwelling birds and the urgency of life-history studies

Li,

Zhu,

Grass

et al. 2023

Biological Conservation

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Minimal shift of eastern wild turkey nesting phenology associated with projected climate change

Cited by 3 publications

References 76 publications

Robust assessment of associations between weather and eastern wild turkey nest success

Robust assessment of associations between weather and eastern wild turkey nest success

Assessing wild turkey productivity before and after a 14‐day delay in the start date of the spring hunting season in Tennessee

Widespread arboreal foraging behavior in ground-dwelling birds and the urgency of life-history studies

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