The Effects of Weather on Avian Growth and Implications for Adaptation to Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is forecasted to generate a range of evolutionary changes and plastic responses. One important aspect of avian responses to climate change is how weather conditions may change nestling growth and development. Early life growth is sensitive to environmental effects and can potentially have long-lasting effects on adult phenotypes and fitness. A detailed understanding of both how and when weather conditions affect the entire growth trajectory of a nestling may help predict population changes in phenotypes and demography under climate change. This review covers three main topics on the impacts of weather variation (air temperature, rainfall, wind speed, solar radiation) on nestling growth. Firstly, we highlight why understanding the effects of weather on nestling growth might be important in understanding adaptation to, and population persistence in, environments altered by climate change. Secondly, we review the documented effects of weather variation on nestling growth curves. We investigate both altricial and precocial species, but we find a limited number of studies on precocial species in the wild. Increasing temperatures and rainfall have mixed effects on nestling growth, while increasing windspeeds tend to have negative impacts on the growth rate of open cup nesting species. Thirdly, we discuss how weather variation might affect the evolution of nestling growth traits and suggest that more estimates of the inheritance of and selection acting on growth traits in natural settings are needed to make evolutionary predictions. We suggest that predictions will be improved by considering concurrently changing selection pressures like urbanization. The importance of adaptive plastic or evolutionary changes in growth may depend on where a species or population is located geographically and the species’ life-history. Detailed characterization of the effects of weather on growth patterns will help answer whether variation in avian growth frequently plays a role in adaption to climate change.

Effects of Heat Waves During Post-natal Development on Mitochondrial and Whole Body Physiology: An Experimental Study in Zebra Finches

“…Physiological and life history traits that impact fitness can be influenced by environmental conditions, in particular temperature, experienced during early life stages (Lindström, 1999;Monaghan, 2008;Conradie et al, 2019). Exposure to high temperature can elicit stress responses (Boddicker et al, 2014), alter metabolism (O'Steen and Janzen, 1999;Moraes et al, 2003;Schnurr et al, 2014), modify water balance (Williams and Tieleman, 2000;McWhorter et al, 2018), impact growth and body size (O'Steen, 1998;Andrew et al, 2017;Andreasson et al, 2018;Sauve et al, 2021), and disrupt functional processes at the subcellular level (Paital and Chainy, 2014). Understanding the physiological impacts of high temperature is particularly important considering that anthropogenic climate change is resulting in an increase in the duration, frequency, and intensity of heat waves (Meehl and Tebaldi, 2004;Tebaldi et al, 2006;Pachauri et al, 2014;Conradie et al, 2020).…”

From climate warming to accelerated cellular ageing: an experimental study in wild birds

“…Growth rate is known to be influenced in a complex manner by weather conditions [34], and previous experimental studies increasing nest temperature have reported contrasted results (positive effect: [17]; negative effects: [10,18]). Our experimental manipulation did not affect body size or mass during postnatal growth, but our results suggest that intermediate nest temperature might be optimal in our great tit population (i.e.…”

Influence of different weather aspects on breeding performance, food supply and nest-space use in hoopoe offspring

“…weather) conditions surrounding the nest influence offspring nest-space use. Specifically, two important environmental factors, weather and predation risk (Lima 2009;Chalfoun and Martin 2010;Rivrud et al 2010;Reichert et al 2012;Sauve et al 2021), seem to affect the trade-off nestlings face when choosing between the two preferred localities in the nest. Given the relatively long developmental period of hoopoe nestlings (Krištín 2001;Hudec and Šťastný 2005) and the fact that they are still immature and clumsy when the recordings were made, it is surprising to observe nestlings actively responding to environmental changes with differential nest-space use.…”

“…Weather and predation risk are important environmental factors that may be difficult to forecast, at least in specific landscapes and climatic regions (Lima 2009;Chalfoun and Martin 2010;Rivrud et al 2010;Reichert et al 2012;Sauve et al 2021). Thus, when choosing a habitat, animals have to cope with more or less unpredictable environmental conditions throughout their whole life and adjust their life history traits to changes in the environment (Tökölyi et al 2012).…”

“…Weather conditions during the early stages of life can affect offspring both directly and indirectly, e.g. in terms of thermal conditions (Sauve et al 2021), food availability (Arlettaz et al 2010(Arlettaz et al , 2017, parental care, e.g. the provisioning effort (Dawson and Bortolotti 2000;Öberg et al 2015), or changes in parental allocation rules and decisions (Chalfoun and Martin 2010; Ryser et al 2016).…”