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Circumpolar dynamics of a marine top‐predator track ocean warming rates |
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| Authors: | Sébastien Descamps Tycho Anker‐Nilssen Robert T Barrett David B Irons Flemming Merkel Gregory J Robertson Nigel G Yoccoz Mark L Mallory William A Montevecchi David Boertmann Yuri Artukhin Signe Christensen‐Dalsgaard Kjell‐Einar Erikstad H Grant Gilchrist Aili L Labansen Svein‐Håkon Lorentsen Anders Mosbech Bergur Olsen Aevar Petersen Jean‐Francois Rail Heather M Renner Hallvard Strøm Geir H Systad Sabina I Wilhelm Larisa Zelenskaya |
| Institution: | 1. Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre, Troms?, Norway;2. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Trondheim, Norway;3. Department of Natural Sciences, Troms? University Museum, Troms?, Norway;4. Migratory Bird Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage, AK, USA;5. Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Nuuk, Greenland;6. Department Bioscience, Arctic Research Center, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark;7. Environment Canada, Mount Pearl, NL, Canada;8. Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Troms?, Norway;9. Department of Biology, Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada;10. Departments of Psychology and Biology and Ocean Sciences Centre, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, NL, Canada;11. Kamchatka Branch of the Pacific Geographical Institute, Far‐Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Petropavlosk‐Kamchatsky, Russia;12. Department of Biology, Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway;13. Fram Centre, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Troms?, Norway;14. Department of Biology, Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics (CBD), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway;15. National Wildlife Research Center, Environment Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada;16. Faroe Marine Research Institute, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands;17. , Reykjavik, Iceland;18. Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, Québec,, QC, Canada;19. Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Homer, AK, USA;20. Institute for Biological Problems of the North, Far East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Magadan, Russia |
| Abstract: | Global warming is a nonlinear process, and temperature may increase in a stepwise manner. Periods of abrupt warming can trigger persistent changes in the state of ecosystems, also called regime shifts. The responses of organisms to abrupt warming and associated regime shifts can be unlike responses to periods of slow or moderate change. Understanding of nonlinearity in the biological responses to climate warming is needed to assess the consequences of ongoing climate change. Here, we demonstrate that the population dynamics of a long‐lived, wide‐ranging marine predator are associated with changes in the rate of ocean warming. Data from 556 colonies of black‐legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla distributed throughout its breeding range revealed that an abrupt warming of sea‐surface temperature in the 1990s coincided with steep kittiwake population decline. Periods of moderate warming in sea temperatures did not seem to affect kittiwake dynamics. The rapid warming observed in the 1990s may have driven large‐scale, circumpolar marine ecosystem shifts that strongly affected kittiwakes through bottom‐up effects. Our study sheds light on the nonlinear response of a circumpolar seabird to large‐scale changes in oceanographic conditions and indicates that marine top predators may be more sensitive to the rate of ocean warming rather than to warming itself. |
| Keywords: | black‐legged kittiwake climate change nonlinear response ocean warming rate population decline seabird sea‐surface temperature |