AI Article Synopsis
- Long-distance migrants face heightened vulnerability to climate change during both their wintering and breeding periods, yet the specific effects of climate on their annual cycle stages are not well understood.
- A 46-year national dataset was used to examine how winter precipitation and breeding temperature influence the breeding timing (laying dates) and clutch size of 19 migrating bird species in the UK.
- Findings revealed that while both spring temperature and winter precipitation influenced when birds laid their eggs, spring temperature had a significantly larger impact, while neither climate factor strongly affected clutch size, indicating that breeding ground conditions are more critical for reproductive traits.
Article Abstract
Long-distance migrants may be particularly vulnerable to climate change on both wintering and breeding grounds. However, the relative importance of climatic variables at different stages of the annual cycle is poorly understood, even in well-studied Palaearctic migrant species. Using a national dataset spanning 46 years, we investigate the impact of wintering ground precipitation and breeding ground temperature on breeding phenology and clutch size of 19 UK migrants. Although both spring temperature and arid zone precipitation were significantly correlated with laying date, the former accounted for 3.5 times more inter-annual variation. Neither climate variable strongly affected clutch size. Thus, although carry-over effects had some impact, they were weaker drivers of reproductive traits than conditions on the breeding grounds.
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Source |
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3871353 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2013.0669 | DOI Listing |
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